Re: [dwm] Minimalism

On Jan 17, 2008 9:50 PM, markus schnalke <meillo_AT_marmaro.de> wrote:
> Sylvain Bertrand <sylvain.bertrand_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > And for dwm, I don't know what would be the cost to build directly the
> > > > X11 packets or to recode the XCB lib straight on Linux syscalls.
> > >
> > > This will make dwm unportable and we should implement the different
> > > ways to communicate with X11 (socket file, network,..)
> >
> > If portability is a major feature for dwm, then I'll pass on this.
>
> Just have a look at the Unix philosophy:
>
> Choose portability over efficiency.
>
>
> ... nothing more to say here, I think.

Well... I'd say that if that is the philosophy then it's incomplete.
I'd go for "Choose portability over efficiency, except where
efficiency really, really, really, really matters". However, since
programs with GUIs only really have the GUI as the time-consuming
element when they're doing excessive eye-candy (eg, all that GNOME/KDE
theming stuff), and likewise standard library functions are almost
never used intensively in the time consuming core of a program, trying
to avoid Xlib and libc seems pointless (unless you're running on
something hyper-resouce constrained like a music player or camera.)

-- 
cheers, dave tweed__________________________
david.tweed_AT_gmail.com
Rm 124, School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading.
"we had no idea that when we added templates we were adding a Turing-
complete compile-time language." -- C++ standardisation committee