peterd@opus.cs.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch) (09/21/90)
In article <50554@brunix.UUCP>, rca@cslab5a.cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) writes: > Why must X blank the screen? I thought XNeXT was so handy in that it allowed > the two window systems to coexist on the same screen. Why not keep that, > please!! I think XNext doesn't allow you to resize the window, only specify the size of the root window at start-up. If you started it big enough to be useful, it takes the whole screen :-) My own preference is to have two distinct user interfaces running separately and toggle between them, not try to mix a point-and-click focus window besides a grab-root-focus window, as you move the cursor across the screen (Yes, I know this depends upon your window manager in X!) Still, no accounting for tastes and part of the reason for doing this is to give users more choice. The suggestion of side-by-side operation was debated and it was even suggested that we might be able to allow both kinds of windows to overlap, but clipping can't be done and it just became too ugly for words. There has been some discussion along these lines about using a feature specific to release 4 that allows resizing the root window. I only vaguely understand this (isn't this fun? It's like playing telephone, but with technical buzzwords thrown in! :-) but I understand that if you do this, X says what is then exposed is "undefined" and can be the NeXTstep stuff showing through from behind. It's being investigated and if it's easy it might make it into 1.0 release. If not, you are free to take sources and hack it in. :-) Of course, I also hope to hear from someone about getting keyboard and mouse events without NeXTstep. We've apparently got a lead, which means a stand-alone version (no NeXTstep at all) is a possibility. Progress update, since I seem to have everyone's attention. I talked to somebody about doing a little app to allow us to launch this without running a shell. We need a button to select X, a few choices on a menu (like "info", hide" and "quit" and a man page. YES< WE MUST ALL SUPPLY MAN PAGES! (sorry, I don't know where that came from.) Now, to design the Icon! :-) - peterd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ " Although botanically speaking a fruit, in 1893 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that tomatoes are a vegetable (and thus taxable under the Tariff Act of 1883) because of the way they are usually served. " ref: Smithsonian, August, 1990. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) (09/25/90)
In article <2264@opus.cs.mcgill.ca> peterd@opus.cs.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch) writes: >In article <50554@brunix.UUCP>, rca@cslab5a.cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) writes: >> Why must X blank the screen? I thought XNeXT was so handy in that it allowed >> the two window systems to coexist on the same screen. Why not keep that, >> please!! > >I think XNext doesn't allow you to resize the window, only >specify the size of the root window at start-up. If you >started it big enough to be useful, it takes the whole >screen :-) Well, you couldn't resize it, but you could move it around, shrink it to a mini-window and have NeXTStep windows over the XNeXT window, it was easier to copy information from one gui to the other. Also it was possible to have shell-scripts that would open an X-applications in a XNeXT window that was just big enough to show the content of an applications X-window. This way the X-app seemd and looked like almost a stupid NeXTStep app without cut and paste. If someone would have managed to support cut and paste between X-selections and the NeXTStep pasteboard, then we would be pretty close to having x-windows show up directly in the Workspace. >My own preference is to have two distinct user interfaces >running separately and toggle between them, not try to mix Depends on whether you run X in it's own right or just because a certain app is not available in NeXTStep and thus are forced to use X. I'm part of the latter category and thus want to hide X as much as possible. >ugly for words. There has been some discussion along these >lines about using a feature specific to release 4 that >allows resizing the root window. Why resize the root window? Scrollbars do a perfect job, if this is possible. >Of course, I also hope to hear from someone about getting >keyboard and mouse events without NeXTstep. We've >apparently got a lead, which means a stand-alone version >(no NeXTstep at all) is a possibility. Yuck! (very personal opinion) >attention. I talked to somebody about doing a little app >to allow us to launch this without running a shell. We >need a button to select X, a few choices on a menu (like >"info", hide" and "quit" and a man page. Why don't you talk with the guy who wrote XNeXT? He has an icon, menu, etc? Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet