Marcin Krol wrote: > > On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Greg S. Hayes wrote: > > > Desktops are a value added product > > Not at all. It's not seventies anymore. Now desktop (widely understood) is > de facto part of OS. > > Marcin Krol In my opinion, one of the major points of the Unix approach is precisely that the whole GUI is an *optional* component (just like other major components, by the way). I can do without or pick the one I like best and have the right to expect everything else to (sort of) adapt accordingly (well, this last point is not here yet).
I have often tried to articulate the feeling of the difference between Windows and Unix, and here follows the reasoning of a convert to the latter: with Unix, the user (even more so the root user) is in control. Applications are expected to adapt, not the other way around. In a sense, it would be best if applications could adapt without the user (or a configuration program) configuring each of them when a change is made: it is up to each application to look around when launched, and adapt on the fly (the user might want different instances of the same application with different behavior, after all: environment variables affecting behavior maybe are a kind of attempt at this). Of course, applications need an API that either abstracts the services they can rely on or lets them "look around" and find out what's available. I understand that LSB is definitely concerned with the former, and I would like to hear comments about the latter. Davide Bolcioni -- #include <disclaimer.h> // Standard disclaimer applies -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version 3.1 GE/IT d+ s:+ a C+++$ UL++++$ P>++ L++@ E@ W+ N++@ o? K? w O- M+ V? PS PE@ V+ PGP>+ t++ 5? X R+ tv- b+++ DI? D G e+++ h r y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
