Re: Anybody here endure C/Cpp? (.h to .inc conversion)

From: Phil Carmody (thefatphil_demunged_at_yahoo.co.uk)
Date: 01/06/05 

Date: 06 Jan 2005 12:33:54 GMT

Beth <BethStone21@hotmail.nospicedham.com> wrote:
> Phil Carmody wrote:
>> Beth wrote:
>> > Oh, yeah, I'm not saying X is perfect...but compared to Windows'
> insanely
>> > wasteful and pointless (and illogical) design, X is an "angel" of GUI
>> > design...
>>
>> Tha absurd thing is that someone in the past once said:
>>
>> "Programming X-Windows is like trying to find the square
>> root of pi using roman numerals. "
>>
>> When _that_ has suddenly become the more elegant system, then something
>> somewhere else has gone horribly, horribly wrong. (I quite like Xlib
>> to be honest, it's trivial to write a C++ wrapper around it that is
>> wonderfully easy and natural to use. Not particularly useful for real
>> world programs but fine for simple monitors (e.g. xload) or graphics
>> demos.)
>
> No, this is a confusion between "standard / design" and _implementation_...

And can you please tell me quite where I mention the implementation of X?
It appears that it is you, not I, who is confused.

> This is like blaming all car crashes on Ford...or blaming 9/11 on Boeing...

Where do I blame anything on anything?

It's nice that you're attempting to be brief for once, but when you dive in
with demonstrative pronouns, could you please at least make some attempt to
make it clear to what you are referring?

> _X_ is just fine...something like XFree86, on the other hand...now, there's
> a different matter altogether...

And can you please tell me quite where I say X isn't just fine?

> I popped your quote into Google and found an "anti-X" webpage that was
> making loads of complaints and, for example, it was mentioning that some X
> "clock" application takes 1.4 MB and another takes 600KB...

I popped your quote into Google Groups and found an anti-Phil post that was
making lots of complaints and, for example, it was mentioning that Phil
doesn't know the difference between design and implementation. However,
continuing this discussion would cause the thread to swallow its own tail,
which would cause usenet to collapse in on itself.

[snip - When Beth compiles 'Hello World', it's 11K long]
> From the looks of things, the majority of these programs is some bloated
> GCC "startup" code...because the X & libc comes out at 12KB, the libc alone
> comes out at 11KB, the X alone comes out at 12KB...and I'm rounding the
> figures there so it's actually bytes, not KB, between them...not quite to
> the highest Descartean levels of scientific proof but what else could be to
> blame for the 12KB file size here? And I've seen executable ELF files that
> are only a KB or so (you can make it mere bytes, if you get really
> "extreme" ;)...and one assumes LD won't link in what isn't used by the
> program...the only other common thing I can think of between these programs
> that could be taken about 11KB is the "startup" code from GCC (you know,
> handling the "argc", "argv" stuff and calling "main" :)...

That's funny. When I use GCC to compile 'Hello World', I get an executable
that's :

GCC 3.3/x86 2944 bytes
GCC 2.95/x86 3020 bytes
GCC 3.4/x86 3000 bytes
GCC 3.0/x86 2932 bytes

It seems your programs suffer from the same problem your usenet posts do.

[snip - more than 12K]

Phil 

-- 
The gun is good. The penis is evil... Go forth and kill.