What is _gained_ my using an alternate socket, that could not have
been achieved
without it. Similarly what is _gained_ by defining a new
interpretation for DISPLAY,
that could not have been hidden in the x11 transport library?
So far all I can see is that two other programs (xauth, ssh) had to
be updated
to cope with the new DISPLAY contents.
Other programs are affected. For example, the standard astronomer's
tool "ds9" just doesn't work with the new DISPLAY format. Luckily it
can be recompiled under Leopard (although right now the people in
charge of DS9 are advising that Leopard X11 users simply set their
DISPLAY variable to ":0", advise which might raise a few hackles
around here), but I'm wondering how long before someone comes along
with a commercial X11 based app that breaks because of this change
(although admittedly this is unlikely as Macs don't have too many
commercial X11 apps). My feeling is that if someone like Sun made a
change to the DISPLAY variable like this they'd break hundreds of
commercial apps and their users would be screaming, but with Apple X11
is for "hobbyists" or "developers" who don't mind fixing apps that it
breaks.
For the record I like the implementation of the auto X11 launching, I
just can see that maintainers of X11 apps that this breaks on Leopard
are going to see this as an "Apple Issue" rather than a problem in
their own code. You're going to end up with advice on like what the
ds9 site currently says, which is not necessarily the best solution
(BTW: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/issue.html).
Jamie
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
X11-users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/x11-users/email@hidden
