[KLUG Members] Xwindows sawfish Gnome whats the scoop?

[Adam Williams]

>Could someone explain to me what Xwindows, sawfish,
>Gnome is.  I do not completly understand the structure
>of these.
>I think this is what I understand:
>*Xwindows is what does windows portion of things

No, Xwindows provides the driver and event handler.
- initial and control graphic display, mouse point, keyboard, etc...
- manage network connectivity,  host a wants to put bit b on screen at x &
y
- user pressed key "A",  tell application this happened


>*Then Sawfish manages everything gives it the look and feel

sort of.  sawfish draws borders around windows,  provides minimize,
maximize, buttones, etc...  Controls what window has focus, etc...  It
*may* be in charge of the background of the desktop, colors, etc...
Unless you have configured something else to control those,  to which
sawfish will relinquish control

>*Gnome well I thought that also is what gives the look and feel

No.  The gnome project includes the GTK widget set,  which draws buttons,
text entry boxes, etc.. obviously part of the look-n-feel.  The gnome
project also provides a panel server which gives you menus at the top (and
bottom?) of your screen.  But GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Enviroment)
you never *see*,  it is the infrastructure used by applications and
services to provide things like inter process communication, object
embedding, mime complient cut-n-paste.

>I am just confussed and I was hoping someone could shed
>some light on this.

Thats OK, it is complicated.