[TUHS] X and NeWS history (long)

[Grant Taylor]

On 09/12/2017 09:01 PM, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> Well, I agree that this is one area in which X does OK.

I also like how X will allow me to have windows from remote programs 
mixed with local programs and does not require a full desktop.  (A 
feature that RDP has gotten in the last 10 ? years.)

> Although, being a command line sort of guy, I'm happy to ssh into a machine 
> and run commands.  I try to avoid non-scriptable GUIs.

I completely agree.

> I don't administer headless machines, and stay very far away from Oracle. 
>  I'm not sure what their installer does, but usually running X requires an 
> installed and running system.

Sadly my use case what proving to a ... questionable DBA that things 
could work as directed, despite his objections the other way.

Since I was not familiar with Oracle RAC and Oracle DB, I needed to go 
the front door route, taking screen shots and documenting each and 
everything I did.  (Partially for political reasons.)

Yes, you do need an installed (base) OS with some dependencies. 
Thankfully you don't need a full window manager or the bloat that comes 
with things like Gnome / KDE.

> So since a number of people have justified networked graphics we're back 
> to the question of what an API should look like.  At a very high level, 
> it needs to be modular because there is no one thing that gets done with 
> graphics, and there's no reason to carry a huge API around just because 
> you need a small part of it.  In particular, there is a distinction 
> between applications that spit out geometry and those that spit out mass 
> quantities of pixel/voxel data.

"voxel"?  I'll have to look that up.

> Also, because of the way that this discussion started, I'm not sure whether 
> or not resource management (windows, keyboard, etc.) falls under the 
> umbrella of graphics.

I expect that they should be included in such discussions.  After all, 
they are intimately related.  GUI applications are of questionable value 
if you can't interact with them.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 3717 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170912/01b07472/attachment.bin>