[comp.windows.x] X11.4 for the Ardent Titan available

corbet@STOUT.ATD.UCAR.EDU (Jonathan Corbet) (05/04/90)

A while ago I asked about X11R4 implementations for the Ardent Titan
machine in this space.  The replies essentially indicated that such a
thing did not exist, so I finally went and ported the code (client side only)
over myself.

Since then, a couple people have indicated an interest in obtaining the work
that I did.  I've been holding off on making it available until I had time to
put together a proper patch set.  Since then, I've decided that such time is
not going to exist in the near future, so, instead, I'm simply making my
entire X directory available through anonymous FTP.

If you are interested, grab pub/x-titan.tar.Z from stout.atd.ucar.edu
(128.117.80.30), in binary mode, of course.  There is also a README file
there, which I will append to the end of this message.

Enjoy!

Jonathan Corbet
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Technology Division
corbet@stout.atd.ucar.edu

------------------------------
The file x-titan.README:

This is my version of the X11R4 client code for the Ardent Titan
architecture.  I have made the port, and we use it regularly here; it seems
to work quite well.  Nonetheless, there are certain to be some weirdnesses
left -- there always are, it seems, with Ardent -- so neither I nor NCAR
make any guarantees as to how this will work for any person or application.

All of the X11 libraries work.  Even things like the SHAPE extension will
work on a server that supports it.  We have applications which use Xaw
extensively, including things like SimpleMenus, and that stuff all works
nicely.  HOWEVER, I have only compiled things using the -43 option.  None
of this code has been tested in the SysV environment, though I expect it
shouldn't be too hard to make that go.

As far as I can tell, the MIT Xlib coexists with Ardent's Xd and Xb (direct
windows and double buffering) extensions -- at least as well as Ardent's Xlib
did.

Most of the clients work.  xload does not; I suspect Ardent has some
strange avenrun setup that makes that not work right.  I have also not had
much luck with xdm, though I have not tried too hard.  It's best to stay
with the Ardent xinit as well.

To build the client stuff, just cd into the "mit" directory and type:

	% make World BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS=-43 >& make.world

It takes an hour or two on my machine.  If you run "make install", it will
try to install things in the usual places -- /usr/bin/X11 and /usr/lib/X11.
Since Ardent put all of their stuff in /usr/X11/bin and /usr/X11/lib
respectively, you can get away with this.

In terms of changes I had to make, there weren't too many.  Ardent's
"Berkeley" environment does not provide readv and writev, so I had to
implement those -- the "sendmsg" method does not work at all, for some
reason.  Ardent's non-blocking I/O is also somewhat less than reliable, so
I have disabled the use of that in Xlib.  It doesn't seem to be a problem
for me so far.  Most everything else built without complaint.

There is a "titan" config file, so imake will work properly.

If you find problems with this software, let me know, and I will see what I
can do about it.  However, my time for this is limited (big project
deadline in July), so I can't promise anything.

Enjoy!

Jonathan Corbet
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Technology Division
corbet@ncar.ucar.edu