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Resources for Rolling Your Own Windowing System?

Posted by Cliff on from the be-your-own-GUI dept.

WalterGR asks: "There are plenty of resources available for writing operating systems, e.g. Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems, the Dinosaur Book, and countless web sites. For those of us who aren't interested in low-level issues, and prefer focusing on human-computer interaction, what resources are available for designing windowing systems (a la X Window)? Issues like the object hierarchy, event management, modularity, redefining behavior at runtime (e.g. for skins) etc. Any suggestions?"

3 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. X is fairly low-level by ryants · · Score: 2, Redundant
    those of us who aren't interested in low-level issues, ... (a la X Window)?
    If you aren't interested in "low-level" issues, then writing a system à la X probably won't be very interesting to you.

    Anyways, the greatest documentation of all to learn form is, was, and always will be source code.

    --

    Ryan T. Sammartino
    "Ancora imparo"

  2. Re:DONT by Fnkmaster · · Score: 2, Redundant
    Sorry, this is just not true. X11 sucks. There are lots of strapped on extensions that make it suck. Writing more won't help. We need a better windowing system, rewritten from scratch for desktop use, that supports network operation without sacrificing speed, that supports transparency and vector fonts internally, that includes a widget set/toolkit as part of the windowing system.


    Just because nobody has done it yet (the only ones you point to who really tried are the Berlin folks, and they've just never had their act together, but have a lot of good concepts).


    Just look at OS X for proof that your argument is entirely irrational.

  3. Re:Windowing system or window manager? by LoRider · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Thank you. I have been saying this ever since I started using X. I hate that the networking bs in X is so prominent. It should be something it can do not such a big part of X.

    In my opinion Linux will never be a serious threat on the desktop until X is either completly rewritten or something better comes along.

    I think XWindow is good at what it does, I just don't like it. I spend too much time dealing with stuff that I don't want to deal with.

    --
    LoRider