jg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Gettys) (08/06/86)
The X Window System developed at MIT has become quite popular, particularly within the Unix community. Existing C applications have been ported to at least eight machine architectures of more than thirteen manufacturers, and the C server to at least six machine architectures and more than sixteen display architectures. Such popularity has had its disadvantages. The current version of X is functionally limited in several respects, and various people building complex systems and environments on top of X have found these limitations to be a problem. Over the past six months, a small group of people have put together a design for the next version of the X protocol. We have attempted to add the facilities necessary to support a significantly wider range of user interface and graphics technology, but hopefully avoiding the "kitchen sink syndrome". A draft of the design was favorably reviewed by people from several universities and commerical firms. At this point we are putting the design out as a public "request for comments". Note that this a network protocol design; the document does not present a specific programming language interface, or toolkits, or application-level interfaces. People unfamiliar with the current X protocol, or with network-transparent window systems in general, will find the document rather opaque. A companion commentary may be somewhat more helpful. It is our expectation that a public domain implementation written in C for Berkeley Unix will go into beta test around March 1, 1987. The system will include a server (complete with code for a 1-bit deep "memory" frame buffer), client interface library, hopefully a well-rounded toolkit, and various applications. It is our expectation that much of the implementation will be done by Digital Equipment Corporation. We also hope to provide a public domain implementation written in Lisp (with Flavors) at about the same time. It is our expectation that the Lisp implementation will be done at MIT. The protocol document and companion commentary also are available via anonymous ftp on zap.mit.edu [18.72.0.126] as pub/x11.spec and pub/x11.comm. Comments, questions, and discussion should be directed to the mailing list: xpert@athena.mit.edu To the extent possible, someone will attempt to answer reasonable questions. Suggestions containing precise proposals for changes are more likely to be listened to than comments of the form "I don't like this". Comments received after September 15 are unlikely to be considered. Bob Scheifler rws@zermatt.lcs.mit.edu Jim Gettys jg@athena.mit.edu