Subject: Re: New faces application & faces monitoring in general

From: richb (Rich Burridge)
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 93 14:29:43 PST

I intend to get back to working on faces in the next couple of months.
The RealWork(TM) project is almost complete, and this will free up my time.

My initial intention is to include all the bug fixes, patches and new
programs/scripts I've received, into a new release and make it available via 
ftp for various people to try on various configurations. Sun now have a stable
version of SVR4, so faces needs to be fixed to properly work with that.

I no longer intend to support the NeWS version of faces. It's been broken 
in the last couple of releases anyhow. When Sun officiallly release their 
version of DPS, I'll put PostScript support back into faces using that.

After the expected followup patch to correct minor problems with this new
version, I intend to add in color XPM support. This will give other people
something to do (ie. generate hundreds of color icons) while I work on the
big project of dividing faces into three as Steve mentioned.

More in a month or so...

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From: richb (Rich Burridge)
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 13:42:38 PST

Faces in it's current form is definitely not vismon. I fully agree with
Boyd on that. I also agree with him (and Rob Pike) that the KISS (keep it
simple stupid) principal is the way to go. This is why I hate SVR4 and X.

Faces has just grown and grown over time. This is why I want to get back
to something close to Pike's original design, which will involve spliting 
faces in three.

Theoretically, just monitoring your mail should then require a much smaller
program. I suspect the good old SVR4 and X libraries will bloat the working
set out though.

Before I do that, I want to give people an existing working faces program.
The last fix for the X-Face support that James Ashton sent me a year ago has
still to be officially applied.

Trying to do this and keep down a RealJob(TM) has been impossible over the
last year. Hence no updates to faces during that period (or any of the other 
four programs I maintain mailing lists for and freely support).

I really do respond to constructive critisism (given time).

---

From: Axel Belinfante <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 93 15:10:29 +0100

Sorry for not taking part in the discussion on the list:
right before the discussion started, i went for a short vacation -
only to see the 'results' of the discussion after my return.

'Technical' note: I do receive the list, so there is no need to
send direct replies to me, as well as a copy of it to the list -
a reply to the list should suffice, unless you want to send a personal
reply, in which case the list probably doesn't need a copy...

[intro and proposal for forwardding to the list deleted]
> I do, and will.  You've identified critical issues that need to be
> addressed for future faces development, and I think your suggestions are
> sound.  I understand Rich has plans to divide the faces functionality
> into three components in future releases:  a display manager, a database
> server and an application.  When that happens, these issues will be
> especially pertinent.

Such a split would make lots of things much easier and more managable,
i suppose.
As you will notice when you look at the ircfaces stuff, it uses the faces
program only as a display program. A perl script does the database lookups,
and forms the interface to the application (ie. the irc client program)
The interface between application and database manager is very much
tailored to the needs of the application.
The interface between the database mananager and the display manager is
very hackish (IMHO) - it uses 'pseudo-mailboxes' that are checked (using
polling, i guess) by the display manager programs (the faces programs)

[description of IrcFaces deleted]

> Sounds interesting.  I can place a copy in the faces ftp archive, if
> you'd like.

Please do so.. it would be interesting to get some feedback on it.
(and maybe some people might want to use it - or hack it to fit their
 needs ;-)
Can i simply ftp it to the
	moose.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/incoming
directory?
I tried to clean up (or at least document) IrcFaces to make it 'usable'
(installable) by a somewhat experienced faces user. Feedback on the doc
(in a README file) would be welcome as well ;-)
As stated in the README file, i don't plan to spend much time on it
anymore, but i guess it might be interesting enough to share it
(at least for me.. wrt feedback ;-)

[description of ideas, and my expression of interest to spend some
 time on their implementation deleted]
> Go for it!  The bitmap caching optimization could be immediately
> useful.

I guess it might be better to wait until the ideas for the splitted
version of faces are more clear...

> Rich Burridge leads the development for faces.  You should be able
> to reach him at [email-masked] these days.

Ok. i will, when i have more time for hacking, and ideas are clear..

Regards,
Axel.

<[email-masked]>   tel. +31 53 893774   fax. +31 53 333815
     University of Twente, Tele-Informatics & Open Systems Group
       P.O. Box 217    NL-7500 AE Enschede      The Netherlands
     "ili ne sciis ke estas neebla do ili simple faris" -- Loesje