Principles
In 1984, Bob Scheifler and Jim Gettys set out the early principles of X:
- Do not add new functionality unless an implementor cannot complete a real application without it.
- It is as important to decide what a system is not as to decide what it is. Do not serve all the world's needs; rather, make the system extensible so that additional needs can be met in an upwardly compatible fashion.
- The only thing worse than generalizing from one example is generalizing from no examples at all.
- If a problem is not completely understood, it is probably best to provide no solution at all.
- If you can get 90 percent of the desired effect for 10 percent of the work, use the simpler solution. (See also Worse is better.)
- Isolate complexity as much as possible.
- Provide mechanism rather than policy. In particular, place user interface policy in the clients' hands.
The first principle was modified during the design of X11 to: "Do not add new functionality unless you know of some real application that will require it."
X has largely kept to these principles. The sample implementation is developed with a view to extension and improvement of the implementation, while remaining compatible with the original 1987 protocol.
Read more about this topic: X Window System
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945)
“With our principles we seek to rule our habits with an iron hand, or to justify, honor, scold, or conceal them:Mtwo men with identical principles are likely to be seeking fundamentally different things with them.”
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“The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.”
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