Documentation?

[Jim Gettys]

On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 12:16 -0700, McDonald, Michael-p7438c wrote:

> > Would that we got a fresh slate (and all new applications); a design
> > done today would be very different than what we did in 1986.  
> 
> That's undoubtable true since we like to think we learn from past
> mistakes. Recurring evidence to the contrary not withstanding.

Thanks.

> 
> But I for one think you guys did one hell of a good job coming up with
> X11. There are a lot more things right with it than there are wrong.
> Most of those 20 year old programs do still work. You can't say that
> about a lot of systems.
> 
> > But you've
> > just heard the complaints from others on this thread who have
> > (*demonstrably*) broken programs from 20 years ago who complain about
> > any change at all.
> >                            - Jim
> 
> Uhhh, I still use Xmh as my mail reader and ctwm without the "glorious"
> transparent menus for my Unix/Linux desktop. So I tend to side with the
> "stick in the mud" crowd. I, personally, am not against adding new
> functionality. I just like my existing stuff to keep working. I also
> side with the "you broke it, you fix it" philosophy instead of the
> current "if someone is still using that, let them fix it" trend.

Backing store and saveunders have *always* been hints.

We did fix it, with composite, in a way better than before.  You don't
have to run a compositing manager that does anything visual at all; you
don't have to have one iota of transparency, drop shadows, or even
anti-aliased fonts.  With any sort of compositing manger running, you
just won't get any exposure events to cause applications that don't
understand that they were hints in the first place.

So I disagree with your conclusion. 
                         - Jim

-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at freedesktop.org>