Re: status of xwpe-alpha

["Kenneth W. Flynn" <flynnk@astro.umd.edu>]

At 04:34 PM 9/4/00 -0400, you wrote:
> > what is current development status of xwpe-alpha?
>
>Development of xwpe is very slow going.  A new version will be made
>avaliable in the next day or so.  I've been looking into CVS and may
>be making an anonymous server available.  (I'm not pleased with the
>security options or I probably would have implemented it this weekend.)
>And yes the xwpe source is an excellent example of a BBoM (Big Ball of
>Mud).

As for CVS, there really are not any good security options.  Making a CVS 
server available is basically a big security hole.  Even with read-only 
access, it still is not good.  I use CVS at work, but not with any publicly 
available access.

Xwpe source is a big ball of something else, I think....

>The basic problem is I'm not interested in writing an IDE.  If I were
>to start writing one it probably wouldn't reach parity with the
>current xwpe.  So instead I do small tweaks every once in a while
>and slowly improve xwpe.

I think that's true of most of us on the list.  IDE's are not exciting.  I 
don't even use Xwpe as an IDE, I use it more as a fancy text editor.  Those 
of us who do occasionally submit patches do so only when something annoys 
us beyond our tolerance, and we actually decide to fix it.  (So, Dennis are 
you going to put my template patch or a version thereof in anytime soon?)

The other real problem is that most of the source was originally in 
German.  This does not make it easier for native English speakers to decipher.

I think Xwpe is going to go on existing as it is until somebody gets up the 
energy to rewrite it from scratch, preferably in C++ (or Java, so it could 
work on Windows?).  At that point, why call it Xwpe?  And I'm not sure 
about keeping the Turbo-C L&F.  So...  The real problem is that no one has 
written a good IDE for UNIX.  Arguably no one has written a good IDE, 
period, but that's a whole 'nother debate.  Xwpe is the best there is, 
which is why I use it, but it has many flaws.

Kenn



------------------------------+-------------------------------
Kenneth W. Flynn              | Graduate Fellow
flynnk@astro.umd.edu          | Department of Astronomy
www.astro.umd.edu/~flynnk     | University of Maryland
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