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Timeout on read()?

Alex Martelli alex at magenta.com
Thu Aug 24 04:21:17 EDT 2000 
"Greg Ewing" <see at my.signature> wrote in message
news:39A4AFE8.96D316AF at my.signature...
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> >
> > I don't think specific GUI windows will be mapped to descriptors
> > directly usable in select on any soon-coming Unix dialect:-).
>
> Actually, Sun's original GUI (SunView) *did* have a
> file descriptor for each window. There were a bunch of
> winXXX entries in /dev, and each time you opened a window,
> one of them got allocated (rather like /dev/ptys).
>
> I think they were only used for output, though, not
> input, although I'm not sure -- the details of all that
> stuff were hidden inside the library.

Presumably, though, whether these file descriptors were
usable in select() [becoming selected on window-events]
would have to be documented somewhere.

X11's architecture is, of course, very different.  I think
it was Ritchie who commented on the X Window System on the
lines of "Isn't it peculiar, sometimes you can fill a
vacuum, and it _still_ sucks".  However, good or bad, X's
architecture _has_, historically, swept the board (something
to ponder for the conspiracy theorists that like to pin MS's
analogous board-sweeping on monopoly-power abuse, brilliant
[?] marketing, or UFO help:-).


Alex
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