Subject: Object Oriented Programming in News

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 87 19:11:17 EST

From: Kee Hinckley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 87 16:00:11 EST
Subject: Object Oriented Programming in News
To: [email-masked]

> There is no statement anywhere that extension code has to be already linked
> into an X server.  A lisp-based X server might very well load code on the fly,
> and a C-based server might also, if C implementations were only up to it.

In fact you could certainly do that on any system that has dynamically
loadable code (an Apollo for instance :-).  That kind of issue is really
independent of the particular server.  In the case of NeWS we have a
server that has chosen to make such loading explicit, at the cost of making
you use its own language.  In the case of X it would presumably be
available as an extension not bound to any particular language - at the cost
of portability but a potential gain in functionality.  Dynamic binding and
global libraries solve a large number of problems (not the least of which
being lack of disk space due to large object modules), but the solution to
that shouldn't reside in a window server, but in the system implementation as
a whole.

                                                        -kee

UUCP:   ...{mit-erl,mit-eddie,yale,uw-beaver,decvax!wanginst}!apollo!nazgul
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I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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