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Date:      Sat, 7 Mar 1998 21:51:51 -0800 (PST)
From:      Brian Handy <handy@sag.space.lockheed.com>
To:        Studded <Studded@dal.net>
Cc:        ports@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Out of date and broken ports - AfterStep
Message-ID:  <Pine.OSF.3.96.980307213553.7543E-100000@sag.space.lockheed.com>
In-Reply-To: <35022DDE.1676E405@dal.net>

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>> The port was a major hassle.  I'm not very happy with the end product.
>> I'll send-pr it so it gets stuck in the system.
>
>	Hmm.... what did you have difficulty with? Other than a few of the
>optional modules not building I didn't have any problems. It built clean
>and runs just fine for me. In fact I was half way considering submitting
>patches for it myself. 

It builds clean modulo the offending apps.  I just don't like the feel of
the end product, and I'd rather all the apps weren't wrapped up in the
port.  I think they're ugly and for any single app listed there I can find
a better one written specifically to do the job.  The pager doesn't work,
when I play with it a while eventually it won't let me jump to certain ... 
uh ... 'pages'.  And in the default setup (with 4 2x2 pagers) I find the
pagers are 3x3...but you can't see that third page.  You can hide xterms
there and never see them on the pager.  I still managed to core-dump it,
just like I can with V1.0.  If you want to *really* be able to use it, you
have to dump the whole #%!&$ GNUstep directory into your home directory,
replete with all the icons (I think).  That's what the INSTALL docs tell
you to do preferably, otherwise it wants world-write to one of the GNUstep
subdirectories in /usr/X11R6/share. It doesn't work with 24-bit color for
the simple reason there isn't a complete set of 24-bit directories listed
with the thing.  (See the PLIST to see what I speak of here...it fails for
the simple reason there isn't stuff like a "desktop-24bpp" directory.)  I
think that's just dumb, I think it should fall back on whatever desktops
and icons you have, and if you don't have enough colors, it should do the
best it can (as all the OTHER window managers in the world do now).  The
Win95 taskbar that appears at the top of the screen doesn't work very
well, once you get too many windows going (and I usually do that pretty
quick) that thing is similarly worthless.  

Anyway, that's all I can come up with off the top of my head.  I used it
for one day, gave it a real chance and pitched it in the trash, and this
rant is the result of that experience.  WindowMaker dances circles around
it, IMHO.  More solid, NO crashes in the time since I started it up (check
the commit date on 0.14.0, I started my current windowmaker session the
day before that time and it's still going strong), and I don't have huge
directories of dreck sitting in ~/GNUstep.

Other people's experience will vary.  While I don't run huge web servers
or serve zillions of clients, I *DO* punish my x-server as much as anybody
and my machines spend a large portion of their day buried in swap.  Lots
of image analysis going on here and the window manager gets a workout. The
new AS client ain't keeping up, and the old one blows a cojone about once
every 5 working days or so. 

So...one or two things there that left a bad taste in my mouth.  :-)




Brian


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