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X11 Release 4

In January the MIT X consortium released the latest version of the X11 window system, Release 4 (X11R4). The ECN will be installing X11 Release 4 after a period of testing. The primary focus of this release has been optimization of the server and improvements in the key applications.

The conversion to X11R4 should be relatively painless for most users. Supplied with the X11R4 distribution is an enhanced version of twm, now known as the "tab window manager".

The Generic Window Manager, gwm, from Groupe Bull has also been added. Unlike other window managers, gwm provides a programming language for tailoring its user interface. It is believed to be ICCCM-compliant. Gwm is user contributed software and is not part of the MIT core X11R4 distribution.

Some users may be dismayed to find that their favorite window manager is no longer available with the newest version of X11. X11R4 does not provide source code for unsupported window managers, and the code supplied previously with X11 Release 3 produces binaries that do not function correctly under X11R4. The window managers that will not be present after the conversion to X11R4 are: awm, rtl and uwm.

The following additions, deletions and modifications have been made to the software in the core distribution.

• Widget writers should read the new X Toolkit Intrinsics specification.
• Application developers who use the Athena Widget Set should read the conversion document ConvertToR4 and the new Athena Widget Set documentation.
• A large number of bugs have been fixed in the server, the libraries and the clients. Servers are now robust enough that they have been known to run for more than 3 months without experiencing any problems.
• The server is now much stricter about disallowing extraneous bits in masks causing some improperly coded applications to generate protocol errors (particularly they don't propagate mask window attribute).
• A new, non-standard extension is provided (see xset bc) to enable backwards-compatibility for broken clients.

A substantial number of optimizations have been added to both the device-independent (dix) and device-dependent (ddx) code.

• The monochrome (mfb) and color (cfb) frame buffer code is now capable of driving many displays at memory speeds.
• The amount of heap memory that is used by the server has been reduced by roughly two-thirds since the last release.

Non-rectangular windows are now supported by the new SHAPE extension. This extension is a Consortium standard.

• round windows such as round clocks (see oclock)
• oval buttons (see xmh and xcalc)
• shaped desktop icons (see xbiff) are now possible

Prototypes of two extensions that are currently under development are provided in this release. These extensions are draft Consortium standards and are subject to change.

• The Multi-Buffering extension provides the ability to do simple animation (see ico -dbl)
• The XInputExtension provides access to alternate input devices

Most of the Xaw library has been rewritten to substantially improve functionality, robustness and performance.

• New SimpleMenu and MenuButton widgets support pop-up and pull-down menus.
• The Text widget has been rewritten and is now quite usable for general editing.
• The VPaned widget has been generalized to include horizontal paning (and is now called Paned).
• The Label widget now supports multi-line labels.
• A new Toggle widget has been provided for implementing radio-buttons.
• The Command widget has been enhanced to use the SHAPE extension to provide true round buttons

Several new utility programs have been provided:

• appres for determining which resources are loaded into particular applications
• listres for printing the resource hierarchy for a widget
• oclock for people who like truly round clocks
• xauth for manipulating authorization files
• xditview for previewing ditroff files
• xfontsel for interactively selecting fonts
• xlsatoms for determining the value of various atoms
• xlsclients for listing the clients currently being run
• xstdcmap for manipulating standard colormaps

The following features have been added to xterm:

• 8-bit input and output
• on-the-fly changing of the current font through escape sequences
• a new menu
• new resources for controlling whether or not synthetic key events are ignored
• increased portability
• improved menus using the new Athena SimpleMenu widget.

Adobe Systems and Digital Equipment Corporation have jointly donated 100dpi versions of the 75dpi fonts that they provided in the last release. In addition, Digital has donated a set of terminal emulator fonts. Bigelow & Holmes and Sun Microsystems have jointly donated a collection of fonts from the Lucida family. Sun has also donated a set of OPEN LOOK glyph fonts. Sony has donated a set of Kanji and Kana fonts, and several individuals have donated additional fixed-width fonts.

A new color database containing many new colors, gray scales and color spectra tuned for some of the common monitors is included.

We hope you enjoy Release 4.

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