toddb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU.UUCP (04/17/87)
One question to be answered now is: What are we going to name X11
clients? Are we going to continue to name them xfoo, xblah and
xkludge, or do we give more of them natural names, without an x prefix,
like "bitmap" and "keycomp". Certainly some would have to stay the
same like "xset" (conflict with shell "set"), "xmore" (conflict with
"more"). As an example, MIT has the simple program "xrefresh", which
DEC has chosen to call "refresh". Any preferences now? Before its too
late.
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{CS,ARPA}net: toddb@athena.mit.edu c--Q Q
US: Todd Brunhoff; Computer Research Lab; Tektronix, Inc. `
Temporarily at Project Athena, MIT -
Phone: (617) 253-1326mayer@hplabsc.UUCP (04/18/87)
I think we should continue prefixing all x-based programs with an 'x'. It's nice being able to walk up to a new system, do an 'ls /usr/bin/x*' and see which x programs are available. Of course you have to watch out for special 'xref' or 'xjesus' programs, where x stands for cross. Perhaps V11 programs should start with an X. -- Niels.
rusty@weyl.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (04/18/87)
In article <1623@hplabsc.UUCP> mayer@hplabsc.UUCP (Niels Mayer) writes: >I think we should continue prefixing all x-based programs with an 'x'. >It's nice being able to walk up to a new system, do an 'ls >/usr/bin/x*' and see which x programs are available. Of course you >have to watch out for special 'xref' or 'xjesus' programs, where x >stands for cross. > >Perhaps V11 programs should start with an X. > >-- Niels. The 4.3bsd man command has a MANPATH environment variable which you can set to a colon separated list of directories to search for manual pages in. What I have is /usr/local/x, /usr/local/x/bin, and /usr/local/x/man and /usr/local/x/man has man1, man3, man6, and man8 (along with the cat? dirs). In my .login file MANPATH has /usr/local/x/man added to it and $path has /usr/local/x/bin added to it. I prefer to split things apart rather than have /usr/bin become some huge fishbowl with god-knows-what in it. Embedding junk in the name of a file when you can use the name of a directory is silly. There are a lot of advantages to having things split apart instead of lumped together. -------------------------------------- rusty c. wright rusty@weyl.berkeley.edu ucbvax!weyl!rusty
ambar@mit-eddie.UUCP (04/18/87)
In article <1623@hplabsc.UUCP> mayer@hplabsc.UUCP (Niels Mayer) writes: >Perhaps V11 programs should start with an X. > >-- Niels. AAARGH. Didn't we just go through this? The only thing worse than shifted characters in source is shifted characters in interactive commands that get typed a lot.... -- AMBAR ARPA: ambar@eddie.mit.edu UUCP: {backbones}!mit-eddie!ambar
ken@rochester.UUCP (04/18/87)
|The 4.3bsd man command has a MANPATH environment variable which you |can set to a colon separated list of directories to search for manual |pages in. What I have is /usr/local/x, /usr/local/x/bin, and |/usr/local/x/man and /usr/local/x/man has man1, man3, man6, and man8 |(along with the cat? dirs). In my .login file MANPATH has |/usr/local/x/man added to it and $path has /usr/local/x/bin added to |it. But not everybody runs BSD. |I prefer to split things apart rather than have /usr/bin become some |huge fishbowl with god-knows-what in it. Embedding junk in the name |of a file when you can use the name of a directory is silly. There |are a lot of advantages to having things split apart instead of lumped |together. I agree, but local situations may differ. Here our binaries are split according to whether the programs are standard distribution, "officially" (i.e. staff) supported or user-contributed. I agree that we should not automatically prepend x to every name. It hasn't bothered me that much though. Ken
mayer@hplabsc.UUCP (04/18/87)
>But not everybody runs BSD.
Very true.
I'll add to that, not everyone is root on all the machines they use,
so you may just end up working on some machine where all the x
programs have been lumped togher under /usr/bin.
It doesn't bother me to type one extra character 'x' before the
command, especially since I use a menu under uwm to select my
frequently used programs (xterm-e, gnuemacs, etc.)
And what happens when I decide that I don't like X and I want to try
out it's incompatible successor, Y? I would rather be able to
decide to run xemacs, or yemacs, rather than having to muck with
the order that /usr/bin/X and /usr/bin/Y occur in $PATH, or
yaweh-forbid, type out the full path name.
I think we should get back to writing x-based programs rather than
arguing about what we're gonna call them.
-- Niels.dsn@mimsy.UUCP (04/19/87)
In article <1623@hplabsc.UUCP> mayer@hplabsc.UUCP (Niels Mayer) writes: >I think we should continue prefixing all x-based programs with an 'x'. >It's nice being able to walk up to a new system, do an 'ls >/usr/bin/x*' and see which x programs are available. ... I agree!
geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) (04/21/87)
In article <6358@mimsy.UUCP> dsn@mimsy.UUCP (Dana S. Nau) writes: > In article <1623@hplabsc.UUCP> mayer@hplabsc.UUCP (Niels Mayer) writes: > >I think we should continue prefixing all x-based programs with an 'x'. > >It's nice being able to walk up to a new system, do an 'ls > >/usr/bin/x*' and see which x programs are available. ... > > I agree! This is a truly *wonderful* idea, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. Let's require EVERYONE to prefix *all* of their files with their initials, or a short abbreviation of the relevant software package, or with their company name. Then we could get rid of all those obnoxious directories. Just think! Never again will you wonder which directory you left a file in! And 'find' could be subsumed by 'ls' -- no more wierd syntax to remember. [That's :-), in case you can't figure it out.] -- Geoff Kuenning geoff@ITcorp.com {hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff