1) X is too slow. It's not a problem of X11. It's a problem for the toolkits that use X11. If the connection is a 56k, why the bloody hell, doesn't the toolkit give-up some of that eye-candy. Well here it's the user's fault also. X11 does not require you to use 24bpp. XFree86 actualy accepts 1,4,8,16,24 bit images. Think mozilla looks slow over 56k? Try netscape navigator then. It's not as slow. No matter the protocol you transmit the data remotely, it's gonna be slow over 56k.
2) No one said that you should use Xlib. I personally think that the ones who succed in that, are both heros and masochists. Ever tried using a toolkit? Say GTK or QT or TCL/TK or motiff...etc? Most of these have nice language bindings. For GTK, you have also the very fast C and the soo easy to use C#.
3) There should be no standard toolkit. You cannot use GTK or QT on a palm or something like that, first because they are big, and consume a lot of that precious space, second because all that eye-candy doesn't fit on the display, third because they consume too much CPU power. The thing with the input methods, it's very well defined and integrated in X11, xinput works perfectly. Localization and accesibility should belong to the toolkit because they are soo related to the way the program is written.
4) X11 is a protocol not an implementation. XFree86 is one of the many implementations. True, XFree86 is reaching it's end of life. BUT that's not because it's a complete mess, because it's not, but it's due to the recent licence change. Indeed, the building process should be moved to a more GNU-like method (autoconf, automake, etc).
Indeed some of the new extensions do break a few things, and that's because translucent windows was inconceivable (is my spelling correct?) 10 years ago. There are solutions for all of them, some are hacks indeed because having an app written for X 15 years ago and still running perfectly is a reason of pride not of shame. Some apps just don't need modification.
It's great that X works even on 2 colour displays. It means that it will run also on a monocrome LCD. Cheap and efficient.
5) Nothing is easy. If it does so many things, in so many ways, on so many systems, with security and other features X has, it's great. Of course greatness comes at the cost of complexity.
The part with xine, well, that problem comes from the window-managers. The thing with the screen-saver was NOT an ugly hack, it just was the easiest way around it. YOU CAN CONFIGURE a screen-saver very easily, I'm not sure on how that is done from a program, but I can investigate.
Why do people doubt something that worked and works even on my 386 and on my dual xeon?
Y! is a cute thing. It tries to implement some things which are cute. But it gives up many of the things that make me respect X11. If it wouldn't then it would be just another X11 like software. Another thing: X has almost 20 years of programing behind it, they cannot beat that in short-term. They want to do what X and GTK (or QT or something else) do. Those are huge monsters. They are the basis of GUI, and have evolved incredibly. No matter how good they are, and how many they are, it's a gigantic task.
Why abandon one of the greatest technologies ever created in computer world? X-Windows is, just as it says, a server. One of the greatest things about it is it's network transparency. X-Windows, is still ahead of it's time. Microsoft introduced Terminal Services back in 97 or 98 for Windows NT Server TSE, long time after X-Windows existed, and it still is not as powerfull as X11, it only draws the whole screen through a pipe, compresses it and sends-it to a client. X11 does a lot more than that, it has security is a number of forms (e.g. ACL based), it has support for extensions - which is soo great, and it tells the client which extensions it supports, it has speed (when not over the network) using UNIX Sockets instead of TCP. Even over the network it's fast. If you think that running mozilla remotely on a 56k is slow, think of the alternatives. Also XFS is great. Imagine you're in a DTP office. You need hundreds of fonts, an UNICODE font can have 20MBytes, or more, why should those fonts be copied on all the stations? One central station for all of them is enough. You want remote desktop? Just thing XDMCP.
X11 should NOT have an integrated widget set in it. That is because, it's multi-os, multi-platform, you can't expect all the platforms to have the same widget set, toolkit, just think embeded devices here. Not to mention that there is already a standard widget set as defined by IEEE(or was it ISO?) standards: motif. Unfortuantely motif is getting kinda old.
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1) X is too slow. It's not a problem of X11. It's a problem for the toolkits that use X11. If the connection is a 56k, why the bloody hell, doesn't the toolkit give-up some of that eye-candy. Well here it's the user's fault also. X11 does not require you to use 24bpp. XFree86 actualy accepts 1,4,8,16,24 bit images. Think mozilla looks slow over 56k? Try netscape navigator then. It's not as slow. No matter the protocol you transmit the data remotely, it's gonna be slow over 56k.
2) No one said that you should use Xlib. I personally think that the ones who succed in that, are both heros and masochists. Ever tried using a toolkit? Say GTK or QT or TCL/TK or motiff...etc? Most of these have nice language bindings. For GTK, you have also the very fast C and the soo easy to use C#.
3) There should be no standard toolkit. You cannot use GTK or QT on a palm or something like that, first because they are big, and consume a lot of that precious space, second because all that eye-candy doesn't fit on the display, third because they consume too much CPU power. The thing with the input methods, it's very well defined and integrated in X11, xinput works perfectly. Localization and accesibility should belong to the toolkit because they are soo related to the way the program is written.
4) X11 is a protocol not an implementation. XFree86 is one of the many implementations. True, XFree86 is reaching it's end of life. BUT that's not because it's a complete mess, because it's not, but it's due to the recent licence change. Indeed, the building process should be moved to a more GNU-like method (autoconf, automake, etc).
Indeed some of the new extensions do break a few things, and that's because translucent windows was inconceivable (is my spelling correct?) 10 years ago. There are solutions for all of them, some are hacks indeed because having an app written for X 15 years ago and still running perfectly is a reason of pride not of shame. Some apps just don't need modification.
It's great that X works even on 2 colour displays. It means that it will run also on a monocrome LCD. Cheap and efficient.
5) Nothing is easy. If it does so many things, in so many ways, on so many systems, with security and other features X has, it's great. Of course greatness comes at the cost of complexity.
The part with xine, well, that problem comes from the window-managers. The thing with the screen-saver was NOT an ugly hack, it just was the easiest way around it. YOU CAN CONFIGURE a screen-saver very easily, I'm not sure on how that is done from a program, but I can investigate.
Why do people doubt something that worked and works even on my 386 and on my dual xeon?
Y! is a cute thing. It tries to implement some things which are cute. But it gives up many of the things that make me respect X11. If it wouldn't then it would be just another X11 like software. Another thing: X has almost 20 years of programing behind it, they cannot beat that in short-term. They want to do what X and GTK (or QT or something else) do. Those are huge monsters. They are the basis of GUI, and have evolved incredibly. No matter how good they are, and how many they are, it's a gigantic task.
Why abandon one of the greatest technologies ever created in computer world?
X-Windows is, just as it says, a server.
One of the greatest things about it is it's network transparency. X-Windows, is still ahead of it's time. Microsoft introduced Terminal Services back in 97 or 98 for Windows NT Server TSE, long time after X-Windows existed, and it still is not as powerfull as X11, it only draws the whole screen through a pipe, compresses it and sends-it to a client. X11 does a lot more than that, it has security is a number of forms (e.g. ACL based), it has support for extensions - which is soo great, and it tells the client which extensions it supports, it has speed (when not over the network) using UNIX Sockets instead of TCP. Even over the network it's fast. If you think that running mozilla remotely on a 56k is slow, think of the alternatives.
Also XFS is great. Imagine you're in a DTP office. You need hundreds of fonts, an UNICODE font can have 20MBytes, or more, why should those fonts be copied on all the stations? One central station for all of them is enough.
You want remote desktop? Just thing XDMCP.
X11 should NOT have an integrated widget set in it. That is because, it's multi-os, multi-platform, you can't expect all the platforms to have the same widget set, toolkit, just think embeded devices here. Not to mention that there is already a standard widget set as defined by IEEE(or was it ISO?) standards: motif. Unfortuantely motif is getting kinda old.
Dunno... it's the same submitter though(GMT+2 in .ro)