E. I don't think your making good comparisons. The count I did is for X running on all hardware platforms. SGI, dec sparc Intel hp and who knows whatever because nothing is dropped out as X code supports all video cards from the beginning of PC's. 30% of the code is just supporting hardware. Because the code is maintained to support such varied systems, A lot of redundant conditional code is required. If all you ever do is use Intel, then you may fail to appreciate the beauty of running and displaying all kinds of graphical apps across a dozen different hardware platforms. This ability is a force that keeps hardware vendors competitive. There are also freely available tooks to create the code for gui interfaces. I've used interviews and it is quite powerful. tcl/tk makes simple text gui easy. Interviews is more complex but handles images also. And as I speak new tools may be being created and may already exist. I've not done image processing gui programing in a couple of years.
If you have a small focus of function with limited hardware support it may seem that X is overly complex. But when you want to do it all, X is a very elegant solution. Xi graphics makes a commercial Xserver which is incredibly fast. FVWM with the Pager module make for a fast and efficient window manager with superb ergonomic management of multidesktop multitasks.
home.earthlink.net shows FvwmPager. This pager is about twice the height of the win95 task bar. But it allows me to keep track of dozens of open tasks and by functionally labeling desktops, I gain further efficiency in switching between tasks. The screen repaint on my 1600x1200 16 million color desks is less than 1/4 of a second. I can also drag windows across desktops and this make cutting and pasting mail and other text documents a breeze. Remember X understands a 3 button mouse and left to highlite and move and center to paste from any desktop to any desktop is again a breeze. Of course my system's are multidisplay and I can also cut and paste across displays.
home.earthlink.net
In view of the fact that X is the most hardware diverse support gui and based on the fact that My best technical judgment says X is robust, stable, ergonomic, extensible and slick, I don't see any reason for looking into a new wheel that may turn out to be square at this time.
tom watson tosiwme |
