Why isn't Kansas X11?

[Rainer Blome <rainer@physik3.gwdg.de>]

Dear Kansas developers,

I am wondering whether it is feasible to use X11 to handle the
morphs.  The advantage would be integration with and use of
services of the rest of X11.

Cons I could think of are so far:

    You want lots of relatively small windows.  If X windows are
    too heavy-weight, they won't do.  GWM (at least) uses
    subwindows to implement decorations, menus and so on, so they
    can't be too heavy, or are they?

    To get arbitrary shapes, in particular `arrows', the WM must
    allow undecorated, transparent windows with no border.

    The WM must communicate with the clients.  If down-mouse-1,
    then dragging should move the object, the object has to react
    to the received X events by sending movement requests to the
    WM.

    The WM must be able to handle multiple screens, in particular
    share windows between screens.

    Shadows (think of the animated gas tank) might be hard to
    implement and slow.

    Problems with thread and event scheduling.

As far as I know, X11 can handle the above, at least in theory
(shared windows I'm not sure about).  What were your reasons to put
morhs /in/ X windows?  Is it because X lacks any other fundamentals
you needed or `just' that you wanted your system to run with an
arbitrary window manager (in particular dreaded olwm ;-)?


	  Rainer