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Re: why we hate fink

Sorry, this is getting to be a lengthy discussion. I'll keep it very short.

On Jan 27, 2004, at 11:17 AM, Bill Northcott wrote:

From: Rich Cook <email@hidden>
So what solution gives people good access to X11 packages that vendors
don't port to Aqua on OS X?  Apple's Frameworks don't support e.g.
OpenGL on X11.  You have to have a separate library for that.  Most
people aren't going to want to port their X11 Unix codes to Aqua, so
it's not realistic to even suggest that as a solution.

Apple has laboured long and hard to make it easy to move OpenGL code to a Mac native environment. Surely the point of using OpenGL is portability. Apple have also worked on Aqua Tcl/Tk and there is already Aqua Gtk.

I wasn't talking about OpenGL as much as the X11 stuff. The OpenGL part of course is very portable, thanks to Apple. Porting from X11 to Aqua is much more difficult. 
This attitude has cost Apple countless programmers through the years,
including yours truly.  Apple needs to treat their programmers as
nicely as they try to treat their customers.  They have greatly
improved, by making OS X into Unix.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

At this point the debate becomes philosophical, but the attitude that programmers/support people are more important than users is a peculiarity of the IT industry that is responsible for most of the dissatisfaction people have with their computers. The reality is that users way outnumber programmers and for the programmers to think that things should be organised to make their life simple at the expense of the users could well be regarded as extreme arrogance. (not of course saying that I do so regard it).

I don't recall saying that programmers and support people are more important than users. You are arguing against a straw man. For the record, I disagree that users are more important than programmers. Both are important. Without programmers, there will be no users, and vice versa. But realize, programmers are lazy just like anyone else. If you want lots of Unix goodies on your OS X box, which we all do on scitech, then you can increase the number of such goodies by making porting to OS X easy. Which it is, if you ignore frameworks.

I think I made my point, and hopefully got some people thinking. So I will shut up now.

Bill Northcott


I also will shut up now, to the relief of many!  :-)


--
Richard Cook
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Bldg-451 Rm-2043, Mail Stop L-561
7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA
phone (925) 423-9605 (work) fax (925) 423-8704
---
Information Management & Graphics Grp., Services & Development Div., Integrated Computing & Communications Dept.
(opinions expressed herein are mine and not those of LLNL)
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 >Re: why we hate fink (From: Bill Northcott <email@hidden>)



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