abm@alan.aux.apple.com (Alan Mimms) (01/18/91)
Announcing the availability later this month of MacX 1.1, an update to the popular X11 server for the Macintosh from Apple. The announcement ceremonies for MacX 1.1 are being held at MacWorld in San Francisco this week, and at UniForum in Dallas later this month. MacX runs on the Macintosh Plus, Macintosh SE, Macintosh Classic, Macintosh LC, and all of the computers in the Macintosh II series. MacX requires at least two megabytes of memory and supports color on machines that can support Color QuickDraw (Macintosh II series and the Macintosh LC and Macintosh SE/30). The same MacX application binary runs on both Macintosh System 6.0.4 and later with or without Multifinder, and on A/UX 2.0 and later. COMMUNICATIONS MacX communicates via the inherently-extensible Macintosh Communications Toolbox -- MacX comes with a connection tool for TCP/IP. Obvious third party and Apple additions to this set are likely. (There is already a DECnet available.) The MacTCP connection tool supports pretty much any Macintosh Ethernet adapter (Apple's EtherTalk board, for example) or any AppleTalk transport (e.g., twisted-pair LocalTalk) to communicate with a DDP<->IP gateway (e.g., Kinetics KIP). X WINDOW SYSTEM SUPPORT MacX is an X11 release 4 server -- it includes support for an optional built-in ICCCM-compliant window manager, X11R4 fonts and colors, a built-in BDF font compiler, built-in standard colormaps, and full support of text and graphic cut and paste between the X11 world and the Macintosh world. MacX ships with the >1MB X11R4 set of MIT fonts (not all are required), so a floppy-based system probably would be very cramped. A hard disk is HIGHLY recommended. MACX 1.1 ADDITIONAL FEATURES * More complete support for graphics cut and paste between the X11 world and the Macintosh world and vice-versa, including a screen-shot facility which supports full color for printing and/or paste into Macintosh or X11 applications. * Greatly improved graphical and communications performance over MacX 1.0, setting a new standard for Macintosh X11 servers. * Enhanced window manager functionality to support newer X11 clients which rely more on compliance with the MIT X Consortium's Inter-Client Communications Conventions standard. * Support for the MIT X11 'Shape' extension, permitting windows of nonrectangular shape to appear directly on the Macintosh desktop. * Additional functionality in the MacX Font Director to permit compilation of an entire folder of font source files at a time. AVAILABILITY MacX 1.1, which will ship later this month, will be available via computer store shelves priced at $295 in single quantities or, for site licenses, from Apple Licensing. MacX is also a part of Apple's X Window System for A/UX product for A/UX 2.0 and later. For more information about getting these two products you can get in touch with a network-ready Apple dealer or you can call Apple at (408)996-1010 and ask for MacX product information, MacX 1.0 upgrade info, or dealer locations near you. MacX is also available as part of the joint Apple/Digital Alliance product called "DEC LanWORKS for Macintosh" (which is being renamed to "DEC PathWORKS for Macintosh" due to some problems with the ownership of the former name). The version supplied by Digital includes support for Appletalk and DECnet communications, the full set of DECwindows fonts, and other tools to aid interoperability between VAX/VMS DECwindows and MacX. -- Alan Mimms (alan@apple.com, ...!apple!alan) | My opinions are generally A/UX X group | pretty worthless, but Apple Computer | they *are* my own...