rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) (09/18/89)
An MIT X Consortium draft standard of the SHAPE Extension is now available for Public Review. This draft standard provides arbitrary nonrectangular window and border shapes as an extension to the X11 protocol. (Versions of this extension have been running at MIT since early February 1989. If you ever looked at contrib/Typical-R4-Screen.xwd on expo and didn't understand what it was, perhaps now you will. :-) The objective of Public Review is to determine if the current draft is acceptable as a Consortium standard. Public Review can result in changes to the draft standard. Public Review of SHAPE is scheduled to end December 18. The X community is encouraged to review the draft and submit comments by electronic mail to shape-ext@expo.lcs.mit.edu Comments sent to other addresses are not guaranteed to be considered. Commentors should take the review process seriously, and should: 1. Identify objectionable wording in the document. 2. Suggest specific alternative wording. and most importantly: 3. Provide a rationale for the suggested change. Commentors should also carefully distinguish between: 1. Problems that they regard as intolerable and that must be corrected before the document becomes a standard. 2. Aspects that they don't like but could live with for a few years until a future revision of the standard. 3. Additional functionality that they can live without in an initial standard but would like to see in a future revision. A Consortium committee will review the comments and respond to commentors. The following documents are available via anonymous ftp to expo.lcs.mit.edu in the directory /pub/SHAPE/ shape.ms SHAPE troff source shape.ps SHAPE in PostScript shape.text SHAPE in plain text The documents are also available via the archive server at xstuff@expo.lcs.mit.edu. The following items are available, by sending a message with the Subject: line of "send etc <itemname>" and an empty message body: shape.ms SHAPE troff source shape.ps SHAPE in PostScript shape.text SHAPE in plain text For example, use "send etc shape.ms" to retrieve troff source. Some mailers produce mail headers that are unusable for extracting return addresses. If you use such a mailer, you won't get any response. If you happen to know an explicit path, you can include a line like path foo%bar.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu or path bar!foo!frotz in the body of your message, and the daemon will use it. If you simply cannot obtain the SHAPE document from the network, you may request a paper copy by writing to: Michelle Leger Laboratory for Computer Science 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139