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X is much larger than Wayland in the same way that OpenGL is much larger than Vulkan. The older protocols tried to encode way too much framework-like applicati

X is much larger than Wayland in the same way that OpenGL is much larger than Vulkan. The older protocols tried to encode way too much framework-like application implementation details which turned out to be a mistake. And in both cases, the framework layers (GUI toolkits, game engines) ended up reimplementing most of that logic but better, leading to lots of unused cruft and problematic architecture in the lower layer.

bitwize 8y ago
> The older protocols tried to encode way too much framework-like application implementation details which turned out to be a mistake. What "framework-like application implementation details"? I came to X development from Windows development, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of stuff bare X provides. X doesn't even have timers, let alone a standard notion of how to display a button or text box. It's very bare bones and minimal, and you can learn most of it in a weekend. (I know, because I did.) Game engines need OpenGL to work, so no surprise they reimplemented much of the rendering layer. GTK is maintained by fucking GNOME developers who run screaming at the sight of old code they have to maintain, so reimplementing fucking everything is par for the course for that crowd. If Wayland ever settles down and becomes usable, within a few years the GNOME team will be lamenting how old and crufty it all is and making plans to replace it with an even newer graphics stack. EDIT: X actually does have something like timers, in the XSync extension.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Believe grandparent is talking about Xlib, etc. True not used much any more, but they don't hurt anything sitting on disk. And as mentioned elsewhere targeted at 80's and 90's hardware.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    > Believe grandparent is talking about Xlib, etc. They mentioned "the old protocols". Xlib is not a protocol. And it's not a framework either. > And as mentioned elsewhere targeted at 80's and 90's hardware. Yeah? And? The DEs that are targeted at 2010s hardware have compositing-latency issues, slow animations, and seem to have trouble making it clear what can be clicked on. I know because any time an article about the Windows 9x UI comes up, Hackernews goes on a nostalgia-tinged, but justified, rant about how great that UI was and how easy it was to read what can be interacted with and how. Maybe the 80s and 90s got a lot right in terms of UI, and constant UI churn just isn't necessary. Besides which, if you can build a UI that could be run on a 90s PC, it takes up far fewer resources than do the UIs of today, and that's compute that you could devote to better programs. And Xorg accelerates the old X and newer Xrender primitives with the GPU anyway, through GLAMOR, so it's not like you're not taking advantage of it.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      > Yeah? And? The space taken by X cruft is not worth mentioning today.

bitwize 8y ago

> The older protocols tried to encode way too much framework-like application implementation details which turned out to be a mistake. What "framework-like application implementation details"? I came to X development from Windows development, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of stuff bare X provides. X doesn't even have timers, let alone a standard notion of how to display a button or text box. It's very bare bones and minimal, and you can learn most of it in a weekend. (I know, because I did.) Game engines need OpenGL to work, so no surprise they reimplemented much of the rendering layer. GTK is maintained by fucking GNOME developers who run screaming at the sight of old code they have to maintain, so reimplementing fucking everything is par for the course for that crowd. If Wayland ever settles down and becomes usable, within a few years the GNOME team will be lamenting how old and crufty it all is and making plans to replace it with an even newer graphics stack. EDIT: X actually does have something like timers, in the XSync extension.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Believe grandparent is talking about Xlib, etc. True not used much any more, but they don't hurt anything sitting on disk. And as mentioned elsewhere targeted at 80's and 90's hardware.
- bitwize 8y ago
  > Believe grandparent is talking about Xlib, etc. They mentioned "the old protocols". Xlib is not a protocol. And it's not a framework either. > And as mentioned elsewhere targeted at 80's and 90's hardware. Yeah? And? The DEs that are targeted at 2010s hardware have compositing-latency issues, slow animations, and seem to have trouble making it clear what can be clicked on. I know because any time an article about the Windows 9x UI comes up, Hackernews goes on a nostalgia-tinged, but justified, rant about how great that UI was and how easy it was to read what can be interacted with and how. Maybe the 80s and 90s got a lot right in terms of UI, and constant UI churn just isn't necessary. Besides which, if you can build a UI that could be run on a 90s PC, it takes up far fewer resources than do the UIs of today, and that's compute that you could devote to better programs. And Xorg accelerates the old X and newer Xrender primitives with the GPU anyway, through GLAMOR, so it's not like you're not taking advantage of it.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    > Yeah? And? The space taken by X cruft is not worth mentioning today.