Re: New (Delphi) xlauncher

[Harold L Hunt II <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

Harold L Hunt II wrote:
> Dennis Foreman wrote:
>
> > At one point in history, (before WW II) the head of the US Patent Office
> > said he wanted to close the office because everything that needed to be
> > invented had already been invented and there was nothing left the world
> > needed. He had obviously not yet heard about the need for penicillin or
> > cardiac by-passes.
> >
> > Harold:
> > What about platforms YOU never heard of or don't use????? (I have one. 
> > And I
> > may very well be interested in the Xlauncher for it.)
> Okay, I will start working on that cross-platform registry editor right 
> away!
>
> Harold
Hey, while we are at it, why don't we rewrite the Cygwin setup.exe 
program to be cross platform so that it can run on Mac OS X?!?

Point: some things are so incredibly simple that making a customized 
version for one platform and letting others worry about other platforms 
is fine.

Obviously, most people here are not considering that the graphics api is 
only a small part of the effort required to make a cross-platform X 
launcher.  For starters, each X server, including Xnest and XWin, has 
some server-specific command-line parameters that are not included in 
other servers.  For XWin, we have -engine, -screen, -scrollbars, 
-lesspointer, etc.  If you really wanted to make a cross-platform X 
launcher, then you would have to do some of the following:

1) Create some sort of method for storing the names of each command-line 
parameter, descriptions of what it does, options that it takes, etc.

2) Write a parser for the parameter description file, or include some 
generic parser, like an XML-based parser.

3) Write a heck of a lot of code that either:
   a) Loads the appropriate parameter-picking window from a list of 
windows that were defined and drawn at compile time
   b) Uses hints in the parameter description file to automatically 
draw controls for each of the defined parameters.

4) Do I need to go on?

Writing a Cygwin/XFree86-specific X launcher in C and using the Windows 
GDI for drawing graphics would maybe take 40 hours.  Writing a 
cross-platform super-neato X luancher would take about 500 hours.

Want to prove me wrong?  Then code me into submission.

Until then, I am the supreme ruler of all programmers!  Bow down to me! 
 Bow down!

Just kidding.

You know, the real problem here is that some people are getting all 
dreamy eyed talking about which cross-platform toolkit to choose, when 
they haven't even thought about how difficult and impractical it would 
be to create a cross platform X launcher.  Sure, we can talk all day 
about which toolkit is better, but that doesn't mean that anyone is 
actually taking any steps towards creating a cross-platform X launcher.

Example: Joe says, ``Hey, I'm going to build the next F-23 fighter for 
the US Air Force.  Which engine should I use, Pratt and Whitney or 
GE?''.  Tom replies, ``I like GE for their reliabiltiy, but man is that 
P&W powerful!  I would use the P&W''.  Harold hears this and interjects, 
``Bullshit.  Joe, *you* are not building the F-23 fighter.''

If anyone wants to further discuss a cross-platform X launcher, please 
create a project for a cross-platform X launcher and take your dicussion 
to that project's mailing list.  Further discussion of a cross-platform 
X launcher is not relevant to this mailing list.

Harold