RE: problems with XFree

["Dennis Foreman" <dforeman at stny dot rr dot com>]

Harold,
Since you admit to having to play with addresses, could you PLEASE not send
postings to me twice. I am now getting ONE from the LIST and ANOTHER direct,
for YOUR replies to my postings.

Since you deprecated my use of your personal email address, I have no
recourse but to post my reply here. After this, I will remain silent, use
what's here and take my lumps.

If freeware was supposed to stop the incompatibilities across multiple
incarnations of UNIX, it has failed. Code that works on one Linux fails on
another (see postings to pthreads & LEDA lists), code that works on LINUX
fails on SunOS or AIX. I don't see any improvement to the end user.  My days
as an active programmer are over. The option of contributing assumes I know
something about the internals of "UNIX". I don't. And I don't want to
either. I am now taking time to enjoy my family (as you want to enjoy
yours). I do however occasionally need to delve into the "UNIX" environment,
so there are some tools I use that may not be commercially available or
which I am directed to use by others.

Will the REAL UNIX please stand up?  There are MANY arguments for/against
any specific version. I don't really care. I just want code that's easy to
use, works and runs as documented. Look what happened to OS/2. Great
capabilities, lousy documentation, hard to use by novices. Look at MSWins:
fair abilities, decent (not great) docs and REALLY easy to use for novices
doing common things. Look who has the market share! How many PC's come with
ANY version of Linux as the default?

BTW, since Solaris came first, why not emulate what they had? And make it
better.

regards,
D. J. Foreman, Ph. D.
Dept of Computer Science
Binghamton University
website: http://WWW.CS.Binghamton.EDU/~foreman

-----Original Message-----
From: cygwin-xfree-owner@cygwin.com
[mailto:cygwin-xfree-owner@cygwin.com]On Behalf Of Harold L Hunt II
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 3:29 PM
To: dforeman@stny.rr.com; cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com
Subject: Re: problems with XFree


Dennis,

Dennis Foreman wrote:
> Harold,
> My problems are not with the code base and hence the implementation, but
> rather the lack of conformity between the different implementations as to
> the arguments allowed.  If you know your UNIX history, you know that what
> hurt its widespread usage most was the inability of developers to rely
upon
> consistent implementations. Different arguments, different actions,
> different shells, different everything else makes for lovely sandboxes,
but
> hardly provides a basis for widely-accepted applications.
>

For future reference, just assume that I am an old timer.

You are completely allowed to have a problem with the difference between
the two implementations.

GNU, Linux, XFree86, and other open-source and free-software projects
were started partly in response to the fact that the UNIX industry had
failed miserably at maintaining any sort of compatibility with each
other.  One major problem with closed-source UNIX operating systems is
that there are so many utilities in the operating system that not every
utility gets fixed in every release.  In fact, you might be using a UNIX
release from 2002 that contains a version of sed that hasn't been
updated since 1990.

As I said before, if you are angry at Solaris for these discrepencies,
you can take it up with them.  If you are angry that XFree86's xterm is
not compatible with Solaris's xterm, then you will have to take it up
with the xterm developers and see if you can convince them to make
changes on your behalf.  Or, you can submit patch files to the xterm
maintainers, which they are much more likely to accept that mere talk of
changes.

With open-source and free-software you at least have the option of
contributing.  Try contributing to Solaris's xterm and let us know how
far you get.

You need to realize that Cygwin/XFree86 is only a Cygwin port of
XFree86.  For any general questions about XFree86 (such as those related
to xterm), *YOU HAVE TO TALK TO THE XFREE86 PROJECT*.  The XFree86
project is located here:

http://xfree86.org/

If you have a problem with XFree86's xterm, *YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT UP WITH
THE XTERM MAINTAINER*:

http://dickey.his.com/xterm/xterm.html

> I used to make a living designing OS's. It was fun. But the goal was
always
> to remember that we had CUSTOMERS (external-paying and internal-free) who
> needed consistency from release to release and products that were
compatible
> across vendors. To remember that we needed to produce programs with the
same
> core set of options, clear delineation of 'vendor-specific options' and
most
> of all, user-friendly support that recognized that not all users should
have
> to be guru's.  If you want to stop people from using something, try making
> them feel stupid. Then no one will really care if yours is the best.
>

Sure.  I have written a User's Guide for the Cygwin-specific XFree86
features.  The XFree86 project has extensive documentation for all
XFree86 programs, libraries, extensions, etc.

I will be perfectly willing to give you support if you are willng to pay
me the same rate for support that you are used to forking over to
commerical UNIX vendors.  However, no amount of blather coming from
anyone will convince me that my time is better spent in front of my
computer than with my fiance.

This is my hobby, not my livelihood.

> PS. I apologize for sending email directly to you.  As a user of many
lists,
> I did not think it necessary to look at the "to" line in my mail pgm to
see
> the actual recipient. My own list programs automatically modify the header
> before sending posts to the list-members. Since I am OBVIOUSLY a MS
Windows
> user, one MIGHT expect that I also use MS Outlook, which does NOT give me
> anything but "reply" and "reply to all". That doesn't make it inferior,
just
> different.
>

Wow.

Did you miss the fact that I am writing an X Window System server for
Microsoft Windows?  Doesn't that sort of imply that I primarily use Windows?

Microsoft Outlook?  Yup, I use that too.  I hit reply-to-all and I swap
the addresses and remove addresses as necessary.  I do the same thing in
Mozilla.

> PPS. My proposed "patch" is for the installation of Xfree (by setup) to
> modify the cygwin.bat file to include the Xfree86 directory in the user's
> path. Which is what I did manually. (You might include a check to see if
> it's been moved.) This adds no cost to non-Xfree users and is necessary
> anyway for those who do use Xfree.  OS/2 used to have a line in some of
its
> install programs asking if the user wanted certain files modified for them
> (like config.sys).
> regards,
> D. J. Foreman, Ph. D.
> Dept of Computer Science
> Binghamton University
> website: http://WWW.CS.Binghamton.EDU/~foreman


We have at times debated whether or not to add /usr/X11R6/bin to the
path in cygwin.bat.  I do not recall where the discussion about that
left off.  You can search the mailing list archives and let us know.
Then you can make the proposed change to cygwin.bat, run ``diff -U3
cygwin.bat > cygwin.bat.diff'' and submit that patch to
cygwin@cygwin.com for comments.

Harold