"a leading-edge graphical platform"

"a leading-edge graphical platform"

Posted Sep 12, 2005 1:43 UTC (Mon) by RiverOfNotMe (guest, #32396)
Parent article: Linux and desktop graphics

When has X ever been considered leading-edge? It's always been behind the pack as far as I can
tell.

1983 - Lisa released. First widely-available usable GUI.
1984 - Mac released. First usable GUI under $10,000.
1988 - X still can't draw a circle portably. Standard toolkit (more or less): Motif, a cheapass copy
of the Windows look, which couldn't hold a candle to the Mac at that time.
2001 - Mac OS X window server; every window is double-buffered; no update flicker.
2004 - Mac OS X has Quartz Extreme (OpenGL-based windowserver -- every window is now a
texture). Render and Cairo finally bring device-independent rendering to X.
2005 - Xegl dies. EXA on the horizon.

I'm not trolling here, honest. X has some good aspects: it exists, it's a standard on non-OS X
Unix platforms, it's fairly interoperable, it has much software written for it.

But it's not leading edge, dude. At least, the graphics aspects have never been leading-edge.
Network transparency (in 1984) was leading-edge, sure. But we're only discussing the graphics
aspects here.

Maybe it will be leading-edge in the future. Fine. But let's keep the record straight.

---

(Log in to post comments)