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New X Roadmap from Jim Gettys

Posted by michael on from the best-laid-plans dept.

A reader points to a roadmap on freedesktop.org that provides a good summary of what is out there for *nix desktops, with emphasis on X but also covering some other areas.

4 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. X Roadmap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ah, there's probably a joke in there somewhere about crossroads and hidden treasure, but I can't find it...

  2. Jim Gettys.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I though he was working on all the termcap stuff...

  3. Why is it still called X-Windows? by Amsterdam+Vallon · · Score: 1, Funny

    My students constantly complain and question why "windows" is in the name of a Unix graphical desktop program.

    The phrase "windows," whether you choose to accept it or not, activates a subliminal correspondence to Microsoft's Windows operating system suit.

    The X-Windows team should immediately begin to brainstorm possible new names for their project. Otherwise, it may never get off the ground entirely and could continue to falter as faster, real-time, 3-dimensional Open Source toolkits become commonplace (see KDE, Gnome, et al.)

    "Windows" are bad.

    --

    Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
  4. More like Roadkill. by SimHacker · · Score: 2, Funny
    Here is my solution to making the X-Windows desktop more productive and user friendly:

    YesTool, a GUI interface to the classic powerful Unix utility " yes ", written by the great hacker and University of Maryland alumni David MacKenzie!

    YesTool will be totally user configable, just like the permissive command-line " yes ". It will be written in object oriented reusable code using parameterizable C++ templates, so you can easily subclass it to make your own tools like NoTool, MaybeTool and ExecutiveDecisionMakerTool. It will support drag-and-drop in single-answer or streaming mode. Also an emacs support package is in the works, with a special command called "psychoanalyze-yes"! And of course it will support gestures, and video input so you can nod and shake your head.

    For more information on " yes ", type "man yes". If you don't have enough men in your life, type "yes man".

    I've written up a design spec in Star Open Office, made some concept screen mock-ups in Gimp, hacked up a prototype in GTK-Perl, but I still just can't seem to get drag-and-drop to work on X-Windows. I'm going to put the prototype up on SourceForge so everyone else can contribute, as soon as I can figure out how to get the damn autoconf file to work.

    -Don

    --
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