Your opinions?

[Geoff Shang]

Hi:

I don't think we really have much to worry about.  Yes, console-mode aps do
tend to lag a little, particularly in some areas (can anyone say audio
editing?), but a lot of people who write applications prefer to use the
text console and, as long as that continues to be the case, applications
will continue to be written for it.  The big difference between the
DOS/Windows comparison and the console/X comparison under Linux, is the
fact that in LInux, it really is just a matter of a different interface.
With windows, DOS had fairly severe limits which were difficult to
overcome.  It also had no fascility for multitasking (many would say that
Windows doesn't either, but it at least looks as if it does).  It's also
not easy to use the same or similar code for both.  In Linux, the
underlying code can be the same, you just slap a new interface on it.
People who do this often write their functionality into libs, which makes
it completely UI independent.

I think the main problem with web browsers in particular is that most of
them have their origins bak in the days when the web was simple and
client-side processing wasn't even thought of.  I think if anyone was to
write a text-mode web browser these days, they'd do it in such a way that
it would incorporate a document object model and allow for client-side
applications such as scripting and applets.  The UI is more an indicator of
the age of some of these aps than anything else.  I first saw lynx in 1994
and it was version 2.3 then.  And I know PIne was at 3.89 in 1994, so it's
not exactly new either.

Geoff.