Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 12:35:14 -0800 (PST) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linux vs. FreeBSD: The Storage Wars Message-ID: <199903292035.MAA02545@pau-amma.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.19990329140549.00903d60@mail.bfm.org>
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>Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 14:05:49 -0600 >From: "G. Adam Stanislav" <zen@buddhist.com> >You mentioned some books... I am wondering if you, or anyone, knows of a >good introduction to windows managers for programmers, one that could get >you started in writing your own windows manager. Secondly, a good intro to >X11 programming. I have read what I have available (Unix Unleashed, >Internet Edition, has a nice description of the basics). It is clearly the >same basic principle as programming MS Windows (I mean the client/server >model, and things like that). It appears to me that MS pretty much took the >X11 idea and ported it to DOS (the idea, not all the nuances of the >implementation). O'Reilly has had a rather extensive series on X11, of which I have 2 volumes at my desk: Vol. 3: X Window System User's Guide Vol. 8: X Window System System Administrator's Guide My copies cover X11R5, but the vast bulk of the material remains applicable (so far as I know) for X11R6. I don't know if O'Reilly has been keeping the series current. (My O'Reilly catalog is at home, and it takes too long for me to look stuff up on the Web to spend the time right now; my email backlog on Monday mornings starts at >700.) >And since I am quite experienced in programming MS Windows, it might >actually be easier for me to learn how to write X11 programs than how to >configure X11 properly. :-) But I need a good reference book to its library >(or libraries). O'Reilly generally has had extremely high-quality books. You could do quite a lot worse. :-) But I suspect you'll be wanting to learn how to configure X properly... and there are lots of ways to do that. (There are, of course, even more ways to configure it improperly... some of which may permit you to choose your mode of failure, I suppose.... Just don't let the "magic smoke" out.) >P.S. Being a programmer is certainly helpful. When I first started with >FreeBSD, and could not find the right command to do something, it was often >easier just to write my own program to do it! For example, I wrote a >program called tuc (Text to Unix Conversion) to let me convert DOS text >files to Unix text files and back, simply because I needed to convert some >files and could not find any help with apropos. I even placed it on my ftp >site (ftp://ftp.whizkidtech.net/unix/tuc/), and several other newbies were >quite happy about it, while old pros assured me no one would ever need it, >hehehe! Not sure what's so weird about DOS (which term *still* causes me to think first of a certain s/360-30, ca. 1970) that it can't cope with normal text files, but if you need to do much with data from that environment in a UNIX (especially FreeBSD) environment, you could do much worse than take a look at the "mtools" port (/usr/ports/emulators/mtools). And since UNIX has been around for so long, a *lot* of code has been written in the environment.... I encourage folks to make use of what's there, and at least be aware of what has already been done: in those cases where an existing tool can handle the problem, mastery of it gives you another item for your toolbox; in cases where it really makes more sense to write your own, you can avoid others' mistakes or better adjust your code to the problem(s) you're trying to solve. Cheers, david -- David Wolfskill UNIX System Administrator dhw@whistle.com voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 371-4621 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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