This section describes changes in the X Consortium distribution since Release 5. Release 6 contains much new functionality in many areas. In addition, many bugs have been fixed. However, in the effort to develop the new technology in this release, some bugs, particularly in client programs, did not get fixed.
Except where noted, all libraries, protocols, and servers are upward compatible with Release 5. That is, R5 clients and applications should continue to work with R6 libraries and servers.
The following are new X Consortium standards in Release 6. Each is
described in its own section below.
The sample implementation in Release 6 is a complete implementation of full
XIE 5.0 protocol, except for the following techniques that are excluded from
the SI:
A draft standard of the XIElib specification is included in this release and
is open for Public Review. The XIElib code matches the 5.0 protocol.
The JPEG compression and decompression code is based on the Independent JPEG
Group's (IJG) JPEG software, Release 4. This software provides baseline
Huffman DCT encoding as defined by ISO/IEC DIS 10918-1, "Digital Compression
and Coding of Continuous-tone Still Images, Part 1: Requirements and guidelines",
and was chosen as a basis for our implementation of JPEG compression
and decompression primarily because the IJG's design goals matched ours for
the implementation of the XIE SI: achieve portability and flexibility
without sacrificing performance. Less than half of the files distributed by the
IJG have been incorporated into the XIE SI. The IJG's software is made
available with restrictions; see xc/programs/Xserver/XIE/mixie/jpeg/README.
Release 6 includes version 2.0 of the ICCCM. This version contains a large
number of changes and clarifications in the areas of window management,
selections, session management, and resource sharing.
The circumstances under which the window manager is required to send
synthetic ConfigureNotify events have been clarified to ensure that any
ConfigureWindow request issued by the client will result in a ConfigureNotify
event, either from the server or from the window manager. We have also
added advice about how a client should inspect events so as to minimize the
number of situations where it is necessary to use the TranslateCoordinates
request.
The window_gravity field of WM_NORMAL_HINTS has a new value, StaticGravity,
which specifies that the window manager should not shift the client window's
location when reparenting the window.
The base size in the WM_NORMAL_HINTS property is now to be included in the
aspect ratio calculation.
The WM_STATE property now has a formal definition (it was previously only
suggested).
We have clarified the CLIENT_WINDOW, LENGTH, and MULTIPLE targets. We have
also added a number of new targets for Encapsulated PostScript and for the
Apple Macintosh PICT structured graphics format. We have also defined a new
selection property type C_STRING, which is a string of non-zero bytes.
(This is in contrast to the STRING type, which excludes many control characters.)
A selection requester can now pass parameters in with the request.
Another new facility is manager selections. This use of the selection
mechanism is not to transfer data, but to allow clients known as managers to
provide services to other clients. Version 2.0 also specifies that window
managers should hold a manager selection. At present, the only service
defined for window managers is to report the ICCCM version number to which
the window manager complies. Now that this facility is in place, additional
services can be added in the future.
A prominent new addition in version 2.0 is the ability of clients to take
control of colormap installation under certain circumstances. Earlier
versions of the ICCCM specified that the window manager had exclusive control
over colormap installation. This proves to be inconvenient for certain
situations, such as when a client has the server grabbed. Version 2.0 allows
clients to install colormaps themselves after having informed the window
manager. Clients must hold a pointer grab for the entire time they are
doing their own colormap installation.
Version 2.0 also clarifies a number of rules about how clients can exchange
resources. These rules are important when a client places a resource ID
into a hints property or passes a resource ID through the selection mechanism.
Some of the properties in section 5 of ICCCM 1.1 are now obsolete, and new
properties for session management have been defined.
ICE provides a common framework to build protocols on. It supplies
authentication, byte order negotiation, version negotiation, and error reporting
conventions. It supports multiplexing multiple protocols over a single
transport connection. ICElib provides a common interface to these
mechanisms so that protocol implementors need not reinvent them.
An iceauth program was written to manipulate an ICE authority file; it is
very similar to the xauth program.
The X Session Management Protocol (XSMP) provides a uniform mechanism for
users to save and restore their sessions using the services of a network-based
session manager. It is built on ICE. SMlib is the C interface to the
protocol. There is also support for XSMP in Xt.
A simple session manager, xsm is included in xc/workInProgress/xsm.
A new protocol, rstart, greatly simplifies the task of starting applications
on remote machines. It is built upon already existing remote execution
protocols such as rsh. The most important feature that it adds is the ability
to pass environment variables and authentication data to the applications
being started.
Some languages need complex pre-editing input methods, and such an input
method may be implemented separately from applications in a process called
an Input Method (IM) Server. The IM Server handles the display of pre-edit
text and the user's input operation. The Input Method (IM) Protocol
standardizes the communication between the IM Server and the IM library linked
with the application.
The IM Protocol is a completely new protocol, based on experience with R5's
sample implementations. The following new features are added, beyond the
mechanisms in the R5 sample implementations:
The X Logical Font Description has been enhanced to include general 2D
linear transformations, character set subsets, and support for polymorphic
fonts. See xc/doc/specs/XLFD/xlfd.tbl.ms for details.
The Synchronization extension lets clients synchronize via the X server.
This eliminates the network delays and the differences in synchronization
primitives between operating systems. The extension provides a general
Counter resource; clients can alter the value of a Counter, and can block
their execution until a Counter reaches a specific threshold. Thus, for
example, two clients can share a Counter initialized to zero, one client can
draw some graphics and then increment the Counter, and the other client can
block until the Counter reaches a value of one and then draw some additional
graphics.
The standard X protocol only allows requests up to 2^18 bytes long. A new
protocol extension, BIG-REQUESTS, has been added that allows a client to
extend the length field in protocol requests to be a 32-bit value. This
useful for PEX and other extensions that transmit complex information to the
server.
A new extension, XC-MISC, allows clients to get back ID ranges from the
server. Xlib handles this automatically under the covers. This is useful
for long-running applications that use many IDs over their lifetime.
The XTEST extension, which first shipped as a patch to Release 5, is
included.
Many of the directories under xc/ (renamed from mit/) have been moved. See
the section The XC Tree for the new layout. The reorganization has
simplified dependencies in the build process. Once you get used to the new
layout, things will be easier to find.
Various filenames have been changed to minimize name conflicts on systems
that limit file names to eight characters, a period, and three more characters.
Conflicts remain for various header (.h) files.
The configuration files have changed quite a bit, we hope in a mostly compatible
fashion. The main config files are now in xc/config/cf, imake
sources are in xc/config/imake, and makedepend sources are in
xc/config/makedepend. The lndir program (for creating link trees) is in
xc/config/util; there is a Makefile.ini in that directory that may be useful
to get lndir built the first time (before you build the rest of the tree).
The rules for building libraries have changed a lot; it is now much easier
to add a new library to the system.
The selection of vendor.cf file has moved from Imake.tmpl to a new Imake.cf.
The config variable that was called ServerOSDefines in R5 has been renamed
to ServerExtraDefines, and applies globally to all X server sources. The
variable ServerOSDefines now applies just to the os directory of the server.
There are a number of new config variables dealing with C++, all of which
have "Cplusplus" in their names.
"#" should no longer be thought of as a valid comment character in Imakefiles;
use "XCOMM" instead.
There are new variables (e.g., HasPoll, HasBSD44Sockets, ThreadedX) and
rules (SpecialCObjectRule). Read xc/config/cf/README for details.
The way libraries get built has changed: the unshared library .o's are now
placed in a subdirectory rather than the shared library .o's.
Multi-threaded programs can often just include Threads.tmpl in their
Imakefile to get the correct compile-time defines and libraries.
There is a new authorization scheme for X clients, MIT-KERBEROS-5. It
implements MIT's Kerberos Version 5 user-to-user authentication. See the
Xsecurity manual page for details on how Kerberos works in X. As with any
other authentication protocol, xdm sets it up at login time, and Xlib uses
it to authenticate the client to the X server.
If you have Kerberos 5 on your system, set the HasKrb5 config variable in
site.def to YES to enable Kerberos support.
The X Transport Library is intended to combine all system and transport
specific code into a single place in the source tree. This API should be used
by all libraries, clients and servers of the X Window System. Note that
this API is not an X Consortium standard; it is merely in internal part of
our implementation. Use of this API should allow the addition of new types
of transports and support for new platforms without making any changes to
the source except in the X Transport Interface code.
The following areas have been updated to use xtrans:
No testing has been done for DECnet.
Xlib now supports multi-threaded access to a single display connection.
Xlib functions lock the display structure, causing other threads calling
Xlib functions to be suspended until the first thread unlocks. Threads
inside Xlib waiting to read to or write from the X server do not keep the
display locked, so for example a thread hanging on XNextEvent will not
prevent other threads from doing output to the server.
Multi-threaded Xlib runs on SunOS 5.3, DEC OSF/1 1.3, Mach 2.5 Vers 2.00.1,
AIX 2.3, and Microsoft Windows NT 3.1. Locking for Xcms and I18N support
has not been reviewed. A version of ico that can be compiled to use threads
is in contrib/programs/ico.
The Display and GC structures have been made opaque to normal application
code; references to private fields will get compiler errors. You can work
around some of these by compiling with -DXLIB_ILLEGAL_ACCESS, but better to
fix the offending code.
The Xlib implementation has been changed to support a form of asynchronous
replies, meaning that a request can be sent off to the server, and then
other requests can be generated without waiting for the first reply to come
back. This is used to advantage in two new functions, XInternAtoms and
XGetAtomNames, which reduce what would otherwise require multiple round
trips to the server down to a single round trip. It is also used in some
existing functions, such as XGetWindowAttributes, to reduce two round trips
to just one.
Lots of Xlib source files were renamed to fit better on systems with short
filenames. The "X" prefix was dropped from most file names, and "CIE" and
"TekHVC" prefixes were dropped.
Support for using poll() rather than select() is implemented, selected by
the HasPoll config option.
The BIG-REQUESTS extension is supported.
The following Xlib functions are new in Release 6:
Internationalization (also known as I18N, there being 18 letters between the
i and n) of the X Window System, which was originally introduced in Release
5, has been significantly improved in R6. The R6 I18N architecture follows
that in R5, being based on the locale model used in ANSI C and POSIX, with
most of the I18N capability provided by Xlib. R5 introduced a fundamental
framework for internationalized input and output. It could enable basic
localization for left-to-right, non-context sensitive, 8-bit or multi-byte
codeset languages and cultural conventions. However, it did not deal with
all possible languages and cultural conventions. R6 also does not cover all
possible languages and cultural conventions, but R6 contains substantial new
Xlib interfaces to support I18N enhancements, in order to enable additional
language support and more practical localization.
The additional support is mainly in the area of text display. In order to
support multi-byte encodings, the concept of a FontSet was introduced in R5.
In R6, Xlib enhances this concept to a more generalized notion of output
methods and output contexts. Just as input methods and input contexts
support complex text input, output methods and output contexts support complex
and more intelligent text display, dealing not only with multiple fonts but
also with context dependencies. The result is a general framework to enable
bi-directional text and context sensitive text display.
Support has been added for participation in session management, with
callbacks to application functionality in response to messages from the session
manager.
The entire library is now thread-safe, allowing one thread at a time to
enter the library and protecting global data as necessary from concurrent
use.
Support is provided for registering event handlers for events generated by X
protocol extensions, and for dispatching those events to the appropriate
widget.
A mechanism has also been added for dispatching events for non-widget
drawables (such as pixmaps used within a widget) to a widget.
Two new widget methods for instance allocation and deallocation allow
widgets to be treated as C++ objects in a C++ environment.
A new interface allows bundled changes to the managed set of children of a
Composite, reducing the visual disruption of multiple changes to geometry
layout.
Several new resources have been added to Shell widgets, making the library
compliant with the Release 6 ICCCM. Parameterized targets of selections
(new in Release 6) and the MULTIPLE target are supported with new APIs.
Safe handling of POSIX signals and other asynchronous notifications is now
provided.
A hook has been added to give notification of blocking in the event manager.
The client will be able to register callbacks on a per-display basis for
notification of a large variety of operations in the X Toolkit. This
feature is useful to external agents such as screen readers.
New String resource converters: XtStringToGravity and XtCvtStringToRestartStyle.
The file search path syntax has a new %D substitution that inserts the
default search path, making it easy to prepend and append to the default
search path.
The Xt implementation allows a configuration choice of poll or select for
I/O multiplexing, selectable at compile time by the HasPoll config option.
The Release 6 Xt implementation requires Release 6 Xlib. Specifically, it
uses the following new Xlib features: XInternAtoms instead of multiple
XInternAtom calls where possible, input method support (Xlib internal
connections), and tests for the XVisibleHint in the flags of XWMHints.
When linking with Xt, you now need to also link with SMlib and ICElib. This
is automatic if you use the XTOOLLIB make variable or XawClientLibs imake
variable in your Imakefiles.
This implementation no longer allows NULL to be passed as the value in the
name/value pair in a request to XtGetValues. The default behavior is to
print the error message "NULL ArgVal In XtGetValues" and exit. To restore
the R5 behavior, set the config variable GetValuesBC in site.def. The old
behavior was never part of the Xt specification, but some applications
erroneously rely on it.
Motif 1.2 defines the types XtTypedArg and XtTypedArgList in VaSimpleP.h.
These types are now defined in IntrinsicP.h. To work around the conflict,
in Motif VaSimple.c, if IntrinsicP.h is not already included before
VaSimpleP.h, do so. In VaSimpleP.h, fence off the type declarations with #if
(XT_REVISION < 6) and #endif.
See Chapter 13 of the Xt specification for more details.
Some minor bugs have been fixed. Please note that the Athena Widgets have
been and continue to be low on our priority list; therefore many bugs remain
and many requests for enhancements have not been implemented.
Text and Panner widget translations have been augmented to include keypad
cursor keysyms in addition to the normal cursor keysyms.
The Clock, Logo, and Mailbox widgets have moved to their respective applications.
Internationalization support is now included. Xaw uses native widechar
support when available, otherwise it uses the Xlib widechar routines. Per
system specifics are set in XawI18n.h.
The shared library major version number on SunOS 4 has been incremented
because of these changes.
The name AsciiText is now a misnomer, but has been retained for backward
compatibility. A new resource, XtNinternational, has been added. If the
value of the XtNinternational resource is False (the default) AsciiSrc and
AsciiSink source and sink widgets are created, and the widget behaves as it
did for R5. If the value is True, MultiSrc and MultiSink source and sink
widgets are created. The MultiSrc widget will connect to an Input Method
Server if one is available, or if one isn't available, it will use an Xlib
internal pseudo input method that, at a minimum, does compose processing.
Application programmers who wish to use this feature will need to add a call
to XtSetLanguageProc to their programs.
The symbolic constant FMT8BIT has been changed to XawFmt8Bit to be consistent
with the new symbolic constant XawFmtWide. FMT8BIT remains for backwards
compatibility, however its use is discouraged as it will eventually be
removed from the implementation. See the Xaw manual for details.
Two new resources have been added, XtNinternational and XtNfontSet. If
XtNinternational is set to True the widget displays its text using the
specified fontset. See the Xaw manual for details.
In discussing PEX it is important to understand the nature of 3D graphics
and the purpose of the existence of the PEX SI. The type of graphics for
which PEX provides support, while capable of being done in software, is most
commonly found in high performance hardware. Creation and maintenance of
software rendering code is costly and resource consumptive. The original
Sample Implementation for the PEX Protocol 5.0 was primarily intended for
consumption by vendors of the X Consortium who intended to provide PEX
products for sale. This implementation was intended to be fairly complete
however it was understood that vendors who intended to commercialize it would
dispose of portions of it, often fairly substantial ones. It was therefore
understood that functionality most likely to be disposed of by them might be
neglected in the development of a Sample Implementation. As PEX is now a
fairly mature standard distributed by most if not all major vendors, and the
standard itself has evolved from the 5.0 protocol level to the 5.1 protocol
level, the X Consortium and its supporting vendors have recognized a need to
focus on certain portions of the PEX technology while deemphasizing others.
This release incorporates PEX functionality based upon the PEX 5.1 level
protocol. The PEX Sample Implementation (SI) is composed of several parts.
The major components are the extension to the X Server, which implements the
PEX 5.1 protocol, and the client side API, which provides a mechanism by
which clients can generate PEX protocol.
The API now provided with the PEX-SI is called PEXlib. This is a change
from R5 which shipped an API based upon the ISO IS PHIGS and PHIGS PLUS
Bindings. That API has been moved to contrib in favor of the PEXlib API
based upon the PEXlib 5.1 binding, which itself is an X Consortium standard.
The PEXlib binding is a lower-level interface than the previous PHIGS
binding was and maps more closely to the PEX protocol itself. It supports
immediate mode rendering functionality as well as the previous PHIGS workstation
modes and is therefore suited to a wider range of applications. It is also
suited for the development of higher level APIs. There are in fact
commercial implementations of the PHIGS API which utilize the PEXlib API.
The PHIGS API based verification tool called InsPEX is moved to contrib. A
prototype of a possible new tool called suspex is in the directory
contrib/test/suspex. Suspex is PEXlib based.
Demo programs are no longer supported and have moved to contrib.
This release conforms to the PEX Protocol Specification 5.1 though it does
not implement all the functionality specified therein.
The release comes with 2 fonts, Roman and Roman_M (see the User's Guide for
more details).
As discussed briefly above certain functionality is not implemented in this
Sample Implementation. Most notably Hidden Line, Hidden Surface Removal is
not implemented. This is a result of both architectural decisions and the
fact that it surely would have been replaced by vendors with proprietary
code. A contributed implementation which supports some of the HLHSR
functionality utilizing a Z buffer based technique is available for ftp from
ftp.x.org in the directory contrib/PEX_HLHSR.
This release does not support monochrome displays, though it does support 8
bit and 24 bit color.
Other functionality not complete in this release is:
PEX 5.1 protocol adds certain functionality to the Server extension,
accessible directly via the PEXlib API. This functionality includes Picking via
the Immediate Mode Renderer (Render Elements and Accumulate State commands
in Chapter 6, all of Chapter 7); new Escape requests to allow vendors to
support optional functionality; a Match Rendering Targets request to return
information about visuals, depth and drawables the server can support; a
noop Output command; Hierarchical HLHSR control (i.e., during traversals);
and renderer clearing controls are the most important features.
Two new macros are defined in Xos.h: X_GETTIMEOFDAY and strerror.
X_GETTIMEOFDAY is like gettimeofday() but takes one argument on all systems.
strerror is defined only on systems that don't already have it.
A new header file Xthreads.h provides a platform-independent interface to
threads functions on various systems. Include it instead of the system
threads header file. Use the macros defined in it instead of the system
threads functions.
There are three new Chinese bdf fonts in xc/fonts/bdf/misc (gb16fs.bdf,
gb16st.bdf, gb24st.bdf).
Bitmap Charter fonts that are identical to the output generated from the
outline font have been moved to xc/fonts/bdf/unnec_{75,100}dpi.
The Type 1 fonts contributed by Bitstream, IBM, and Adobe that shipped in
contrib in Release 5 have been moved into the core.
Some of the misc fonts, mostly in the Clean family, have only the ASCII
characters, but were incorrectly labeled "ISO8859-1". These fonts have been
renamed to be "ISO646.1991-IRV". Aliases have been provided for the Release
5 names.
The 9x15 font has new shapes for some characters. The 6x10 font has the
entire ISO 8859-1 character set.
The Type1 rasterizer that shipped in contrib in Release 5 is now part of the
core.
There is an option to have the X server request glyphs only as it needs
them. The X server then caches the glyphs for future use.
Aliases in a fonts.alias file can allow one scalable alias name to match all
instances of another font. The "!" character introduces a comment line in
fonts.alias files.
A sample font authorization protocol, "hp-hostname-1" has been added. It is
based on host names and is non-authenticating. The client requesting a font
from a font server provides (or passes through from its client) the host
name of the ultimate client of the font. There is no check that this host
name is accurate, as this is a sample protocol only.
The Speedo rasterizer can now read fonts with retail encryption. This means
that fonts bought over-the-counter at a computer store can be used by the
font server and X server.
Many, many bugs have been fixed.
The font server has been renamed from fs to xfs to avoid confusion with an
AFS program. The default port has changed from 7000 (used by AFS) to 7100
and has been registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
The font server now implements a new major protocol version, version 2.
This change was made only to correct errors in the implementation of version
1. Version 1 is still accepted by xfs.
You can now connect to xfs using the local/ transport.
Many, many bugs have been fixed.
The server sources have moved to xc/programs/Xserver. Server-side extension
code exists as subdirectories. The ddx directory is gone; mi, cfb, and mfb
are at the top level, and a hw (hardware) subdirectory now exists for
holding vendor-specific ddx code. Note: the absence of a ddx directory does not
imply that the conceptual split between dix and ddx is gone.
Function prototypes have been added to header files in
xc/programs/Xserver/include, cfb, mfb, mi, and os.
Support for pixmap privates has been added. It is turned off by default,
but can be activated by putting -DPIXPRIV in the ServerExtraDefines
parameter in your vendor.cf file. See the porting layer document for details.
New screen functions, called primarily by code in window.c, have been added
to make life easier for vendors with multi-layered framebuffers. Several
functions and some pieces of functions have moved from window.c to miwindow.c.
See the porting layer document for details. Also, the contents of
union _Validate (validate.h) are now device dependent; mivalidate.h contains
a sample definition.
An implementation of the SYNC extension is in
xc/programs/Xserver/Xext/sync.c. As part of this work, client priorities
have also been implemented; see the tail end of WaitForSomething() in WaitFor.c.
The priority scheme is strict in that the client(s) with the highest
priority always runs. twm has been modified to provide simple facilities
for setting client priorities.
The server can now fetch font glyphs on demand instead of loading them all
at once. See xc/programs/Xserver/dix/dixfonts.c, xc/lib/font/fc/fserve.c,
and xc/lib/font/fc/fsconvert.c. A new X server command line option,
-deferglyphs, controls which types of fonts (8 vs. 16 bit) to demand load; see the
X manual page for details.
The os layer now uses sigaction on POSIX systems; a new function OsSignal
was added for convenience, which you should use in your ddx code.
A new timer interface has been added to the os layer; see the functions in
os/WaitFor.c. This interface is used by XKB, but we haven't tried to use it
anywhere else (such as Xext/sleepuntil.c) yet.
Redundant code for GC funcs was moved from cfbgc.c and mfbgc.c to migc.c.
This file also contains a few utility functions such as
miComputeCompositeClip, which replaces the chunk of code that used
to appear near the top of
most versions of ValidateGC.
The cfb code can now be compiled multiple times to provide support for multiple
depths in the same server, e.g., 8, 12, and 24. See Imakefile and
cfb/cfbmskbits.h under the xc/programs/Xserver/ directory for starters.
The cfb and mfb code have been modified to perform 64 bit reads and writes
of the framebuffer on the Alpha AXP. These modifications should be usable
on other 64 bit architectures as well, though we have not tested it on any
others. There are a few hacks in dix, notably ProcPutImage and
ProcGetImage, to work around the fact that the protocol doesn't allow you to specify
64 bit padding. Note that the server will still not run on a machine such
as a Cray that does not have a 32 bit data type.
For performance, all region operations are now invoked via macros which by
default make direct calls to the appropriate mi functions. You can
conditionally compile them to continue calling through the screen structure. The
following change was made throughout the server:
"(*pScreen->RegionOp)(...)" changes to "REGION_OP(pScreen, ...)"
Some of the trivial region ops have been inlined in the macros. For compatibility,
the region function pointers remain in the screen structure even if
the server is compiled to make direct calls to mi. See include/regionstr.h.
A generic callback manager is included and can be used to add notificationstyle
hooks anywhere in the server. See dixutils.c. The callback manager
is now being used to provide notification of when the server is
grabbed/ungrabbed, when a client's state changes, and when an event is sent
to a client. The latter two are used by the RECORD extension.
A new option has been added, -config filename. This lets you put server
options in a file. See os/utils.c.
Xtrans has been installed into the os layer. See os/connection.c, io.c, and
transport.c. As a result, the server now supports the many flavors of SVR4
local connections.
The client structure now has privates like windows, pixmaps, and GCs. See
include/dixstruct.h, dix/privates.c, and dispatch.c.
Thin line pixelization is now consistent across cfb, mfb, and mi. It is
also reversible, meaning the same pixels are touched when drawing from point
A to point B as are touched when drawing from point B to point A. A new
header file, miline.h, consolidates some miscellaneous line drawing
utilities that had previously been duplicated in a number of places.
A new server, Xnest, uses Xlib to implement ddx rendering. See
xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xnest. Xnest lets you run an X server in a window on
another X server. Uses include testing dix and extensions, debugging client
protocol errors, debugging grabs, and testing interactive programs in a
hardware-starved environment.
Another new server, Xvfb, uses cfb or mfb code to render into a framebuffer
that is allocated in virtual memory. See xc/programs/Xserver/hw/vfb. The
framebuffer can be allocated in normal memory, shared memory, or as a memory
mapped file. Xvfb's screen is normally not visible; however, when allocated
as a memory mapped file, xwd can display the screen by specifying the framebuffer
file as its input.
xc/config/util/mkshadow/, a replacement for lndir.
We have dropped support for the following libraries and programs and have
moved them to contrib: CLX library, PHIGS library, MacFS, auto_box,
beach_ball, gpc, ico, listres, maze, puzzle, showfont, viewres, xbiff,
xcalc, xditview, xedit, xev, xeyes, xfontsel, xgas, xgc, xload, xman, and
xpr.
Two new families have been registered: LocalHost, for connections over a
non-network transport, and Krb5Principal, for Kerberos V5 principals.
To distinguish between different host families, a new xhost syntax
"family:name" has been introduced. Names are as before; families are as
follows:
Many new symbols are defined to tell you what extensions and visual classes
are available.
An interface for setting client priorities with the Sync extension has been
added.
Many bugs have not been fixed yet.
There is a new resource, choiceTimeout, that controls how long to wait for a
display to respond after the user has selected a host from the chooser.
Support has been added for a modular, dynamically-loaded greeter library.
This feature allows different dynamic libraries to by loaded by xdm at
runtime to provide different login window interfaces without access to the xdm
sources. It works on DEC OSF/1 and SVR4. The name of the greeter library
is controlled by another new resource, greeterLib.
When you log in via xdm, xdm will use your password to obtain the initial
Kerberos tickets and store them in a local credentials cache file. The
credentials cache is destroyed when the session ends.
Now supports a few escape sequences from HP terminals, such as memory locking.
See xc/doc/specs/xterm/ctlseqs.ms for details.
The termcap and terminfo files have been updated.
ctlseqs.ms has moved out of the xterm source directory into
xc/doc/specs/xterm.
The logging mis-feature of xterm is removed. This change first appeared as
a public patch to Release 5.
Many bugs have not been fixed yet.
The screen saver control option has two new sub-options to immediately activate
or deactivate the screen saver: xset s activate and xset s reset.
The X Test Suite, shipped separately from R5, is now part of the core
distribution in R6.
The code has been fixed to work on Alpha AXP. The Xi tests contributed by
HP and XIM tests contributed by Sun are integrated.
Everything under xc/workInProgress represents a work in progress of the X
Consortium.
Fresco, Low Bandwidth X (LBX), the Record extension, and the X Keyboard
extension (Xkb, which logically belongs here but was too tightly coupled
into Xlib and the server to extract) are neither standards nor draft standards,
are known to need design and/or implementation work, are still evolving,
and will not be compatible with any final standard should such a standard
eventually be agreed upon. We are making them available in early form
in order to gather broader experimentation and feedback from those willing
to invest the time and energy to help us produce better standards.
Any use of these interfaces in commercial products runs the risk of later
source and binary incompatibilities.
R6 includes the first sample implementation of Fresco, a user interface
system specified using CORBA IDL and implemented in C++. Fresco is not yet a
Consortium standard or draft standard, but is being distributed as a work in
progress to demonstrate our current directions and to gather feedback on
requirements for a Fresco standard.
The Fresco Sample Implementation has been integrated into the X11R6 build
process, and will be built automatically if you have a C++ compiler
available. Documentation on Fresco can be found in xc/doc/specs/Fresco. The
Fresco and Xtf libraries are found in xc/workInProgress/Fresco and
xc/workInProgress/Xtf, respectively. There are some simple Fresco example
programs in contrib/examples/Fresco, and a number of related programs in
contrib/programs, including:
A demo program (dish) is included that shows how a scripting language (Tcl)
can rather easily be bound to Fresco through the CORBA dynamic invocation
mechanism. A copy of Tcl is included in contrib/lib/tcl.
To build Fresco you must define HasCplusplus in site.def; in addition, you
may have to set CplusplusCmd and/or CplusplusDependIncludes to invoke the
appropriate C++ compiler and find the required header files during make
depend. Finally, you should check the vendor.cf to see if there are any
other configuration variables you should set to provide information about
your C++ compiler.
Fresco requires a C++ compiler that implements version 3 of the C++ language
(as approximately defined by USL cfront version 3). While Fresco does not
currently use templates or exceptions, it does make extensive use of nested
types, which were inadequately supported in earlier versions of the language.
Fresco has been built with the following platforms and C++ compilers:
Building Fresco with CenterLine C++ requires that you pass the -Xa flag to
the C++ compiler. Place the following lines in your site.def:
Fresco does not yet build under Microsoft Windows/NT.
Support for XKB is not compiled in to Xlib by default. It is compiled in
the X server by default only on Sun and Omron Luna machines. You can
compile it in by setting
Turning on XKB in the X server usually requires changes to the vendor ddx
keyboard handling. There is currently support only in the Sun and Omron
ddx.
If you turn on BuildXKBLib, additional functions are added to Xlib. Since
the resulting library is non-standard, it is given a different name:
libX11kb instead of libX11. All Makefiles produced by imake will use
-lX11kb to link Xlib.
The library changes for XKB are known not to work on the Cray; many other
systems have been tested, including the Alpha AXP.
There are some XKB test programs in contrib/test/Xkb.
The XKB support in Xlib is still at an early stage of formal review and
could change. We expect some additions in an eventual standard, but few
changes to the interfaces provided in this implementation. A working draft
of the protocol is in xc/doc/specs/Xkb/.
The X Consortium is working to define a standard for running X applications
over serial lines, wide area networks, and other slow links. This effort,
called Low Bandwidth X (LBX), aims to improve the startup time, performance,
and interactive feel of X applications run over low bandwidth transports.
LBX does this by interposing a pseudo-server (called the proxy) between the
X clients and the X server. The proxy caches data flowing between the
server and the clients, merges the X protocol streams, and compresses the
data that is sent over the low bandwidth wire. The X server at the other
end uncompresses the data and splits it back out into separate request
streams. The target is to make many X applications transparently usable
over 9600 bps modems.
A snapshot of the code for this effort is included in xc/workInProgress/lbx/
for people to examine and begin experimenting with. It contains the following
features:
However, the following items have yet to be implemented (which is why it
isn't a standard yet):
RECORD is an X protocol extension that supports the recording of all core X
protocol and arbitrary X extension protocol.
A version of the extension is included in xc/workInProgress/record. The
implementation does not quite match the version 1.2 draft specification, but
the spec is going to change anyway; the version 1.3 draft is in
xc/doc/specs/Xext/record.ms. The GetConfig request is not fully implemented.
A test program is in contrib/test/record.
A simple session manager has been developed to test the new Session Management
protocol. At the moment, it does not exercise the complete XSMP protocol
and the user interface is rather simple. While it does have enough
functionality to make it useful, it needs more work before we would want
people to depend on it or use it as a good example of how to implement the
session protocol.
A sample client, xsmclient, has been written to demonstrate the session support in Xt.
An attempt has been made to merge the multi-threaded server source with the
single-threaded source. The result is in the xc/workInProgress/MTXserver
directory. The sources here include only files that were changed from the
single-threaded server. The multi-threaded server may not compile.
Unfortunately, the single-threaded server sources have continued to evolve since
this snapshot of the MTXserver was produced, so there is work to be done to
get the MTXserver sources back into a state where they can be compiled.
We've changed our sources to stop using the BSD function names index,
rindex, bcopy, bcmp; we now use strchr, strrchr, memcpy/memmove, and memcmp.
We still use the name bzero (because there is no BSD equivalent for the general
case of memset) but it is translated to memset via a #define in
<X11/Xfuncs.h>. The BSD function names are still supported in
<X11/Xos.h> and <X11/Xfuncs.h>.
Most client-side uses of caddr_t should now be gone from our sources.
Explicit declarations of errno are now only used on non-ANSI systems.
The libraries use more standard POSIX *_t types.
A new version of the patch program is in xc/util/patch; it understands the
unified diff format produced by GNU diff.
to Chapter 5. Filing Bug Reports
4.1. New Standards
X Image Extension
Inter-Client Communications Conventions Manual (update)
Inter-Client Exchange Protocol
Inter-Client Exchange Library
X Session Management Protocol
X Session Management Library
Input Method Protocol
X Logical Font Descriptions (update)
SYNC extension
XTEST extension
PEX 5.1 Protocol (released after R5)
PEXlib (released after R5)
BIG-REQUESTS extension
XC-MISC extension
4.2. XIE (X Image Extension)
ColorAlloc: Match, Requantize
Convolve: Replicate
Decode: JPEG lossless
Encode: JPEG lossless
Geometry: AntialiasByArea, AntialiasByLowpass
xieperf exercises the server functionality; it provides unit testing and a
reasonable measure of multi-element photoflo testing.
4.3. Inter-Client Communications Conventions Manual
4.3.1. Window Management
4.3.2. Selections
4.3.3. Resource Sharing
4.3.4. Session Management
4.4. ICE (Inter-Client Exchange)
4.5. SM (Session Management)
4.6. Input Method Protocol
The R6 sample implementation for the internationalization support in Xlib
has a new pluggable framework, with the capability of loading and switching
locale object modules dynamically. For backward compatibility, the R6
sample implementation can support the R5 protocols by switching to IM modules
supporting those protocols. In addition, the framework provides the
following new functions and mechanisms:
There are IM Servers for Japanese and for Korean, internationalized clients
using IM services, and an IM Server developer's kit in contrib. The IM
Server developer's kit hides the details of the IM Protocol and the transport
layer protocols, and hides the differences between the R5 and R6
protocols from the IM Server developer, so that an IM developer has an easier
task in developing new IM Servers.
You can add your converter using this mechanism for your specific
performance requirement.
4.7. X Logical Font Description
4.8. SYNC extension
4.9. BIG-REQUESTS extension
4.10. XC-MISC extension
4.11. XTEST extension
4.12. Tree Reorganization
4.13. Configuration Files
4.14. Kerberos
4.15. X Transport Library (xtrans)
lib/X11 (including the Input Method code)
lib/ICE
lib/font/fc
lib/FS
XServer/os
xfs/os
The XDMCP code in xdm and the X server has not been modified to use xtrans.
4.16. Xlib
XInternAtoms, XGetAtomNames
XExtendedMaxRequestSize
XInitImage
XReadBitmapFileData
IsPrivateKeypadKey
XConvertCase
XAddConnectionWatch, XRemoveConnectionWatch, XProcessInternalConnection
XInternalConnectionNumbers
XInitThreads, XLockDisplay, XUnlockDisplay
XOpenOM, XCloseOM
XSetOMValues, XGetOMValues
XDisplayOfOM, XLocaleOfOM
XCreateOC, XDestroyOC
XOMOfOC
XSetOCValues, XGetOCValues
XDirectionalDependentDrawing, XContextualDrawing
XRegisterIMInstantiateCallback, XUnregisterIMInstantiateCallback
XSetIMValues
XAllocIDs
XESetBeforeFlush
_XAllocTemp, _XFreeTemp
Support for MIT-KERBEROS-5 has been added.
4.17. Internationalization
4.18. Xt
4.19. Xaw
4.19.1. AsciiText
4.19.2. Command, Label, List, MenuButton, Repeater, SmeBSB, and Toggle
4.20. PEX
4.20.1. PEX Standards and Functionality
Backface Attributes and Distinguish Flag
Font sharing between clients
Patterns, Hatches and associated attributes
Transparency
Depth Cueing for Markers
Double Buffering is available for the PHIGS Workstation subsets directly
through the workstation. The buffer mode should be set on when creating the
workstation. For immediate mode users double buffering is achieved via the
Multi Buffering Extension (aka MBX) found in the directory xc/lib/Xext.
4.21. Header Files
4.22. Fonts
4.23. Font library
4.24. Font server
4.25. X server
4.25.1. Xnest
4.25.2. Xvfb
4.25.3. ddx
4.26. New Programs
4.27. Old Software
4.28. xhost
inet: Internet host
dnet: DECnet host
nis: Secure RPC network name
krb: Kerberos V5 principal
local: contains only one name, ""
The old-style syntax for names is still supported when the name does not
contain a colon.
4.29. xrdb
4.30. twm
4.31. xdm
4.32. xterm
4.33. xset
4.34. X Test Suite
4.35. Work in Progress
4.35.1. Fresco
Working Imakefiles are provided for all of the utilities and examples.
SPARCstation SunOS 4.1.3 CenterLine C++
SPARCstation Solaris 2.3 CenterLine C++ (requires v2.0.6)
SPARCstation Solaris 2.3 SPARCCompiler C++ v4.0
HP 9000/700 HPUX 9.0.1 CenterLine C++
SGI Indy IRIX 5.2 SGI C++
IBM RS/6000 AIX 3.2.5 IBM xlC
Sony NEWS NEWSOS 6.0 Sony C++
Fresco has also been compiled on the DEC Alpha under OSF/1 version 2.0 using
a beta test version of DEC C++ 1.3. Fresco cannot be built with the Gnu C++
compiler (version 2.5.8 or earlier) due to bugs and limitations in g++.
4.35.2. XKB (X Keyboard Extension)
4.35.3. LBX (Low Bandwidth X)
The X Consortium is continuing to work on both the implementation of the
remaining items and the full specification. The goal is to have all of the
pieces ready for public review later this year. Since the specification for
LBX will change, we strongly recommend against anyone incorporating LBX into
a product based on this prototype. But, they are encouraged to start looking
at the code, examining the concepts, and providing feedback on its
design.
4.35.4. RECORD extension
4.35.5. Simple Session Manager
We have not yet written a proxy for connecting ICCCM 1.0 clients to the session manager.
4.35.6. Multi-Threaded X Server
4.36. ANSIfication
4.37. Miscellaneous
Converted to HTML by
Markus Stumpf, 1994-07-19