Re: FVWM: Like RATS from a sinking SHIP...

From: Santeri Paavolainen <santtu_at_ufolabs.fi>
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 1997 15:07:30 +0300 (EET DST)

On Fri, 4 Jul 1997, Stig wrote:
> As I worked, I found myself cursing the, uh, "randomness," slipshod
> non-design and layering of cargo-cult duct-taped additions... The
> profusion of variables named 'val1' and 'val2'. The poor state of
> documentation and commenting, etc...
>
> Basically, I kept wanting to rewrite bigger and bigger chunks of code...
> What started as two XEmacs buffers grew to six and then eight and then ten
> and beyond.
>
> Then it dawned upon me that this was probably a huge waste of time.
> Especially considering that fvwm-2.0.45 was released months ago and the
> patches on the mailing list aren't even being collected and rereleased.

How true.

One day, not in so distant past I wondered if one could move all
graphics-related code (eg. any code that uses X drawing primitives)
into a separate module, which then could be potentially dynamically
loaded, thus allowing a separation between functionality and the
outlook of the WM. (Think about it: same fvwm code, just different
dynamic libraries for the classic pseudo-motif fvwm look, afterstep
look and so on)

Buggers. Fvwm code is so spaghetti you can't make a head or tail out
of it, it is hardly modularized and contains so much layered code and
almost no documentation of any functions. That is, I gave up after
having touched dozens of files and moving thousands lines of code,
without having really progressed at all.

>From my experiences I think that if fvwm 3.0 is ever released, it
should be a complete rewrite from scratch up, with ICCCM compliancy
and modularity built from ground up.

OTOH, Enlightement is written from scratch -- it might have some hope
after maturing (but no, I don't consider it to be really usable for
doing work with, not yet).

--
santtu_at_iki.fi                    I have become death, destroyer of the worlds.
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Received on Sun Jul 06 1997 - 07:08:11 BST

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