home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!acs.ucalgary.ca!cpsc.ucalgary.ca!ajfcal!novatel!hpeyerl
- From: hpeyerl@novatel.cuc.ab.ca (Herb Peyerl)
- Subject: Re: Need Some Advice..
- Message-ID: <1992Nov10.154422.2215@novatel.cuc.ab.ca>
- Sender: news@novatel.cuc.ab.ca (The UseNet USER)
- Organization: "NovAtel Communications Ltd. Calgary, Alberta, Canada"
- X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
- References: <1992Nov9.192837.17737@bcars6a8.bnr.ca>
- Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 15:44:22 GMT
- Lines: 69
-
- Duane Fowler (djf@bnr.ca) wrote:
- : Other than that though there is little I miss. I found the window manager
- : really painful for reasons too numerous to mention, but most had to do
- : with how little I was able to customize it. There seemed to be too few
- : ways to do neat things that X, MWM, et al can do using resources, xset, etc.
- :
- : So what sorts of thing could DM do that X can't?
-
- Not to participate in a religious war or anything. Heck, I've also
- switched to using X/twm on a fulltime basis but not because I like
- it better... I've made the switch because the DM is eventually going
- to disappear and we're eventually going to upgrade our Apollo's to something
- that will require me to use X.... I figured I'd better learn how to
- use X now before we upgrade so that when we upgrade, I'll be prepared to
- educate our users...
-
- The things that always disturbed me about X:
-
- If I wanted a bunch of VT100's on my desk, I'd have put a bunch of VT100's
- on my desk...
-
- Ever scroll backwards in an xterm looking for something only to get to
- the top of the scrollable region and realize it's lost forever? (I realize
- I can set the scrollable region to be very large but.....)
-
- Ever have the urge to say "I wanna save the entire scrollback region of
- my xterm but don't feel like copying and pasting it screen by screen into
- another window. (see: "pn" dm/commands)
-
- Have you ever wanted to copy more than a screenful of text from an xterm
- into a file? It takes many more key-strokes/button presses in X.
-
- Ever want to type a whole bunch of commands and then later want to go
- back and change some of them before they execute? (ie: buffering commands
- while waiting for one to finish).
-
- Ever try editing a file that's LARGER than the amount of free disk space
- you have left?
-
- Ever accidentally run a program that generates a *LOT* of output and by
- the time you get around to hitting ^S it's blitted it all off the screen?
- (ever played the hit-return and ctrl-s as fast as possible game?)
-
- Ever wanted to see two different parts of the same source file and have
- both get updated if one is changed? (I know there are other editors that
- can do this like Emacs but we all know what "emacs" stands for... "Eight
- Megabytes And Constantly Swapping"...)
-
- Ever edited a file that has lines that are wider than the width of your
- xterm/entire-screen? Kind of hard to follow code that way. How 'bout when
- you do a "ps -agux"... Do you get output wider than 80 columns in an xterm
- no matter how wide your xterm is? When I do it in a DM pad, I get the
- entire argument-list... I can scroll sideways to see the whole thing.
-
- -----
-
- Anyways, before I started using the DM, I thought X was great (X11R2 at
- the time) but hadn't had much Xperience... Then I started working here
- and thought the DM was awkward and painful... But after you get used to
- it and stop fighting it; it's actually quite a bit more comfortable. Now
- I'm reasonably happy using X but even after a year or more of (almost)
- exclusive use of X, it still feels like putting on an old pair of comfy
- slippers whenever I have to use the DM. (Our users still use the DM.)
-
- --
- "I was early to finish | hpeyerl@novatel.cuc.ab.ca <Reply-To> | I brew |
- I was late to start, I | peyerlh@cuug.ab.ca | there- |
- might be an adult, but | #define JANITOR "Network Administrator"| fore I |
- I'm a minor at heart." | JANITOR, NovAtel Communications Ltd.| AM. |
-