From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: tlaronde@polynum.com Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:31:18 +0200 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] X Window System Message-ID: <20070924103118.GA226@polynum.com> References: <1190553102.693814.317030@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1190553102.693814.317030@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Topicbox-Message-UUID: c399914a-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 09:14:14AM +0000, pavlovetsky@gmail.com wrote: > What would be the difficulties if someone wishes to port X to Plan 9 > and wants to see it running independently of rio? Any ideas, from > technical point of view? This is not a technical advice but more a theoretical one. I'm actually rewriting the 2D interface for KerGIS programs with an eye on want I want/need: a distributed system with computing (may be heavy in the KerGIS case) on CPU nodes, and interface handling (exclusively arithmetic i.e. only ALU intrusctions) on terminals (the connection between the terminal and the CPU being exclusively 1D commands, i.e. the graphical interface is only a graphical mean to select commands and data, there is only one version of the computing programs with a text/line oriented language [batch]). With this is mind, one sees that X is the wrong answer since the interface handling (the menu abstraction, the heavy stuff done by the toolkits) is not on the terminal but on the CPU (if one uses the "distributed" nature of X). This is not its place, and its really "old" conception: a mainframe with dumb terminals. I hope the main idea is clear enough, I mean IMHO providing a "toolkit" plan 9 based would be far better and probably in terms of work far easier than porting the whole X world to Plan 9. In my case, with a huge beast---but that is becoming lean since with the principles above I suppress tons of redundant spaghetti code---, rewriting the graphical interface is a benefit on Unix/X11 and will allow porting to pure plan 9 absolutely easily (with there the full benefit of "distributed"; it will be the same on Unix, but not delegating "distribution" to X, but taking care at it by the architecture of the code). On another side, the X11 people want now to include the graphical server in the OS and wonder about the X protocol (but AFAIK haven't identified that the "distribution"/connexion is not done in the right place). That is, the future of X11 is more towards plan 9 concepts so "following" X11 is a bit weird ;) I hope these thoughts have some interest for what you have in mind. Cheers, -- Thierry Laronde (Alceste) http://www.kergis.com/ Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C