[Xr] Naming Xr (and linguistic nitpicking)

[Bill Spitzak]

On Sunday 13 July 2003 07:30 pm, Bill Spitzak wrote:
> On Saturday 12 July 2003 11:48 am, Robert, Francois wrote:
> > What about Wr for windows, Mr for mac, Lr for Linux/Unix/X, and Xr in
> > general where "X" stands for a wildcard ? ("X" has a long traditionnal
> > use as a "don't care" indicator for instance when describing bitwise
> > flags in bytes or words, in electronic component datasheets for instance)
> > ?
>
> I like this idea. Xr would be the definition of the portable interface.
> Various implementations would all end in 'r'. This would not only indicate
> what system it was for but may identify competing implementations. It would
> be like all the file systems ending in "fs".

I typed that late at night, what I mostly thought was that the various 
implementations could have more than one letter in front of the 'r'.

Maybe the portable interface should be called "*r".

The main implementation is Xr which uses X and Xrender. There might also be 
X11r to run on old X systems, imager to write to a local image, win32r for 
current Windows (on the assumption that they will make a new graphics 
interface), pdfr for the interface to write a pdf file, etc.

-- 
                   ,~,~,~,~ ~ ~ ~ ~
     /\_       _|_========___         Bill Spitzak
 ~~~/\/\\~~~~~~\____________/~~~~~~~~ spitzak at d2.com