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Is it possible under the BSD license they mentioned that they can keep the algorithms secret?

In a word, no. The Xfree project's license is a good example of a modern "BSD license".

Note that you can incorporate portions of the code into your proprietary product, which doesn't have to be released under the same license, and that you don't have to provide source. As far as the recipient of the software is concerned (who might go on to use sections of it in their own proprietary products), it is more liberal than the GPL.

Don't get confused, though, the developers, Xiph, still provide full source and thus the algorithms are completely public.

The reason the BSD license is chosen for this project is presumably the same reason the Vorbis libraries are BSD-licensed - so that VP3 support can be incorporated into proprietary software, which as I have posted elsewhere in this discussion is IMHO a good thing.

hat it has to do with is that xinerama will now be part of the main X consortium's tree.

Umm, this blurb on the Xinerama task force at X.org seems to indicate that it's been "part of the main X consortium's tree" since X11R6.4.

This will (eventually) make commercial X servers (such as those in Solaris, AIX, etc.) slightly larger due to xinerama support being "backported".

Xinerama is already in Solaris 8's X server, at least according to this item on Solaris 8.

The actual item on the XFree86 Web site (go to their home page and search for "Xinerama"; the anchor tag for the Xinerama item is incorrect, with "name=anniversary", so at least with some browsers the "Xinerama" link doesn't work) says:

Public Review of the Draft Standard of the Xinerama Extension to the X Window System, sponsored by X.Org.

After its initial release, as part of X11R6.4, the Xinerama Extension API and code base splintered as many different developers ported it to their X Window System base. The Xinerama task force of X.Org has been working with a cross section of developers to create a new API that meets the needs of all, to replace the various versions currently available. The goal of this task force has been to create an API that can become an X Window System standard. The task force has been following the new Standards process defined by X.Org. The API is now at Stage 4 of that process: Public Review.

The Xinerama extension provides a mechanism for a multi-headed system to function as one large screen. Windows can span multiple screens and can move from one screen to another.

The review period for this proposed standard ends July 26, 2002. A mail list for discussion of the proposed standard has been created, xinerama-std-review@lists.sourceforge.net. This mail list is publicly available, and archived on the project website. The web site for this project is Xinerama@Sourceforge . Further documenation and code is available there.

This is the FIRST and ONLY case of XFree86 code going into the shared implementation. Previously all exchanges were bug fixes.

I don't know whether that means that code from XFree86 will be used as part or all of the implementation for the updated Xinerama, or that the item about new code going in belonged with some other item the bulk of which is missing, but I don't think the XFree86 folk originated Xinerama - they picked up their initial implementation from X11R6.4.

What a great and original idea.

That's not such a big drawback: XFree86 and Squeak both have handwriting software availble for them. For XFree86, you can even get OpenOffice. Why would you want to pay for XP software and struggle with MS Office instead?

After I took the picture, I noticed that you could get two full browser windows plus a terminal window all visible at once if you put the dock on the bottom of the screen. Stunning. I plan to buy one in a few months. Enjoy!

If you've got an Apple laptop or G4, and (in the case of the laptop) don't mind the very real headaches the conversion dongle can cause (probably not an issue with the laptop as (a) it is an Apple product itself and (b) you can use it without the monitor if need be) then by all means the 23" Apple HD monitor will likely be everything you want. They are stunning, and I considered buying one until further research revealed the proprietary interface, the external dongle, the problems people are having with interference and static on the all-digital link, and the fact that there was absolutely no guarantee it would work with an PC's DVI interface (though with the converter it should, assuming you can get the scan frequencies to line up correctly).

I opted for the 24" Samsung instead. For a few hundred extra I get another 1" in size, the ability to plug analog VGA and digital DVI into the thing (as well as composite video and s-video), and the knowledge that others had already managed to get it working with XFree.

You will save some money over the Samsung though (the Apple costs about $600 less), so if you're using it with Apple equipment it is definitely the way to go. If you're using a PC however, you are taking a risk in trying to get the Apple monitor to work (the 22" monitors work, but the 23" monitors are an unknown and I could not get a straight answer out of any of the sales reps or technical support people ... lucky for me as I discovered the Samsung a few days later, after having nearly given up on getting any kind of a big monitor in the near future).

Whichever monitor you end up with, if you're running X you'll want to make use of the very fine modeline generator attached to http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/xpert/2001-Octobe r/012070.html
(save to a local file and use Uudeview, a command-line MIME-ware decoder, to extract the source file, compile, and you've got an easy modeline generator that takes horizontal, vertical, and refresh arguments to create useful and relatively safe modelines for unusual X resolutions like 1920x1200).

Whichever HD ready monitor you get, you are going to find yourself grinning like an idiot as you stare at an unbelievably large, crisp, and fine resolution screen. :-)

You could start Xvfb running on your test client(s), and then fire all 450 sessions off, displaying to the virtual frame buffer(s). You get all the downstream network traffic of the 450 sessions, without having to look at them.

Only if your Linux system supports the old a.out exec format and the ancient libc installed, no?!
Go ahead, grab XF86-2.1-bin.tar.gz and see if any of the binaries run :-)

/tmp/bin$ file xload
xload: Linux/i386 demand-paged executable ZMAGIC), stripped

-adnans

Hello,

I just came from BSDCon02, and wondered why no one has mentioned this here on /. If you've seen the XFree86 webpage lately, you'd notice the realy weird "Commerical Products -- comming soon" and etc. Well what's happening is that Xfree86 is being converted into a corporation (yes yes... I think they are currently an Inc), and guess what! They will be giving the source free, but pre compiled binaries would cost 2 dollars a pop. And if you have some exotic hardware you want xfree86 ported on, hehe, it would cost a lot. So where is this headed? Also, btw, they are going to close the cvs (for stability reasons they say), but you can subscribe to the cvs for 1 dollar per 100 MB (not bad?).

What do you guys think of this? About everthing we know that's not GPL going commerical at some point (even the ones that we thought were GPL ... oh Divx fsckerS?)

One more thing I just remembered, under this the advanced driver modes.. Xv.. blah blah would cost (they are trying to modulize those that arnt already as well). But, the basic core would still be free. And the price is not a set price, it's all subscription based just like m$

It depends on the xinerama support for the chipset. For my ATI Rage128 Mobility, there is no support, though I think that other chipsets fare better. Check www.xfree86.org and http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Xinerama-HOWTO.html.

http://www.xfree86.org. Free, open source, cross-platform. Everybody wins.

Yeah, not like there are any other examples of open source software based on proprietry software.

tlhf

xxx

Also, your linked article talks about a compiler which compiles itself. IE, GCC recognising GCC. Having GCC regocnise BCC, VC++, et al would be insanly difficult. Even more so in this case as Mono is being released after the Microsoft compiler.

You seem to be rather mistaken.

The Xft hack is for X, not GNOME.

This might explain why client-side rendering was chosen. There are pros and cons but the pros seem to outweight the cons by far.

The biggest advantage of this scheme by far is that you don't have to have any magic support for antialiased fonts in your toolkits

This doesn't seem to be a problem since most populair toolkits already support the Render extension. Remember, RENDER is a completely new rendering system for X, not just anti-aliasing.

...even Athena widgets...

If there was great demand for this it would already have happenend don't you think? Changing the Xaw toolkit to support RENDER would not be too hard I think.

-adnans

They didn't try and build an interface for X Windows. They built one ON TOP of BSD. That's what Linux must do. We can't rely on X Windows because it has too many shortcomings.

X(1)

NAME

X - a portable, network-transparent window system

SYNOPSIS

The X Window System is a network transparent window system which runs on a wide range of computing and graphics machines. It should be relatively straightforward to build the X Consortium software distribution on most ANSI C and POSIX compliant systems. Commercial implementations are also available for a wide range of platforms.

The X Consortium requests that the following names be used when referring to this software: X
X Window System
X Version 11
X Window System, Version 11
X11

Click here to see bill gates fucking a penguin up the bum! its Linuxxx! You need XXX windows to see it

Writing pixels directly to a frame-buffer is slow. You lose all of the acceleration features of your video card. Keeping as much of the protocol at a high level as possible is good. The only things that benefit from direct frame-buffer access are programs that do all their own rendering. (Think video decoders.)

Still, if you think about it, the basic gist of your idea is to get rid of the network channel from the communication protocol, and instead have the app talk directly to the X server, say, in shared memory. If so, then how does your idea compare to MITSHM and Shared-Memory Transport? Or the Direct Rendering Interface for that matter? And for 2-D stuff, let's not forget the Direct Graphics Architecture extension. Nothing stops GTK, Qt and friends from using any one of these technologies if they'd improve performance and latency.

NVidia cards are fine. Take a look at XFree86 documentation to get an idea about supported video cards.

FreeType is a software font engine that can be used in graphics libraries, display servers, font conversion tools, text image generation tools, etc. to produce high quality glyphs and characters. The important thing here is that FreeType supports Adobe Type1 and TrueType (that is, Windows) scalable fonts.

the X Rendering Extension is a protocol that represents a new way to render (that is, draw) stuff on your screen in X windows.

thus, Xft's incorporation into Mozilla gives us smooth, high quality, Windows compatible fonts while surfing the web on Linux or *BSD

Please remember I wrote ten emails. Ok, so maybe my first email was ignored because the developer was busy. Maybe my second email was accidentally mistaken for spam (although I'm sure I didn't mention enlarging anything) and deleted. Perhaps my third email went unanswered because all who read it were expecting that anybody else would answer. But when they ignored my ten bug reports (and I sent them during an interval of about half a year), I don't think it can be a matter of chance. It must be a matter of policy: if what you say doesn't interest us, we won't spare a minute letting you know. With that attitude, any attempt at improving their PR is in vain.

What you say about getting to know their community reveals me that you've never approached Xfree, so you think they're like any other generic large free software project, like the Linux kernel for example. You are wrong. Unless they've changed since last year, they do most of their internal email traffic in private, closed lists that you can't read, much less write to, unless you are a member of the project. So what you are suggesting is not possible. Read here for details.

I'll repeat it: I'm not a newbie. I know your advice is good intentioned, but everything you said, I already considered before I sent them my first bug report. I think if I couldn't get a word from them, the average experienced free software developer won't get it either. To me, they now appear not very differently of a gratis (no cost) proprietary software project, even if they're volunteers.

And I'm worried about that, because the XFree project is capital to free software; that's why I'm "bitching", as you called it.

O.K., here's how - from The LFS Hint (read all of it, there are some helpful details about customizing the install that the XFree86 Build doc doesn't explain, read that too though.)

Download & extract: X410src-1.tgz, X410src-2.tgz, X410src-3.tgz

Install with (from inside the xc/ directory that the archives extract to):

make World &&
echo /usr/X11R6/lib >>/etc/ld.so.conf &&
make install &&
make install.man &&
/sbin/ldconfig

Driver status is actually at:

Driver status

We toyed with leaving graphics entirely to an extension, but the argument that a window system without any graphics would be useless won out pretty fast :-).

We never thought the existing rendering would last as long as it did: we expected significant extensions would have occurred long since.

We can't get rid of the core X11 primitives because they are a part of the X11 specification and all apps use it and it isn't going to go away any time soon. Once render is complete and stabilized we can just encourge people to not use the core primitives. Eventually we can care less about making them fast and concentrate on making them unobtrusive.

I found additional documents looking through the website. These are much more interesting to read than the changelog.

The README
The release notes
Installation details
Driver status

Enjoy!

I found additional documents looking through the website. These are much more interesting to read than the changelog.

The README
The release notes
Installation details
Driver status

Enjoy!

I found additional documents looking through the website. These are much more interesting to read than the changelog.

The README
The release notes
Installation details
Driver status

Enjoy!

I found additional documents looking through the website. These are much more interesting to read than the changelog.

The README
The release notes
Installation details
Driver status

Enjoy!

The problem with X11 is, in part, the separation of client/server; this causes extra latency and a heap of context switches

The context switches aren't a significant overhead. They weren't even a significant overhead in 1986 when Sun first started spreading FUD about this (at the time, Sun was trying to push NeWs over X11). See e.g. Jim Gettys' posts in the "rendering model in X" thread in the Xrender mailing list archives

It's not all sunshine, he's willing to own up to places where X needs improvement (exposure lists are a big one, througput for e.g. texture mapping is another), but it's way better than a lot of people claim. And Xrender and DRI address the vast majority of the problem cases very effectively.

Sumner

Should the Unix/Linux world move away from X? Redesign a graphical layer from the ground up, supporting antialiasing, transparency

There are people working on adding a new rendering model that does antialiasing and sub-pixel addressing. "People" being mostly Keith Packard.

enhanced programming environment

There is no reason you can't do that to X, in fact if you compare things like xlib to Gtk--, or Xt to Qt there has been huge progress. Oh, and there is GNUStep too, which is mostly like NeXTStep which is what OS X is based on...

and a new, well defined and examined user interface?

That is the hard part. In part because backwards compatibility works against you.

This would be going the Mac OS X route

I think OS X has a lot going for it, but the biggest thing really is that the apps do mostly work alike, which is rather unlike X11. I know I'm partly at fault since the X11 apps I worked on (xtank and w3juke) are not much alike :-)

Should the Unix/Linux world move away from X? Redesign a graphical layer from the ground up, supporting antialiasing, transparency

There are people working on adding a new rendering model that does antialiasing and sub-pixel addressing. "People" being mostly Keith Packard.

enhanced programming environment

There is no reason you can't do that to X, in fact if you compare things like xlib to Gtk--, or Xt to Qt there has been huge progress. Oh, and there is GNUStep too, which is mostly like NeXTStep which is what OS X is based on...

and a new, well defined and examined user interface?

That is the hard part. In part because backwards compatibility works against you.

This would be going the Mac OS X route

I think OS X has a lot going for it, but the biggest thing really is that the apps do mostly work alike, which is rather unlike X11. I know I'm partly at fault since the X11 apps I worked on (xtank and w3juke) are not much alike :-)

OS-X fonts look good to some people because, in general, Quartz renders the desktop quite softly. In reality, OS-X's font subsystem is rather low tech, it lacks hinting, gamma correction, etc. You can read all about it on the XRender mailing list. Personally, I don't like OS-X's fonts, but that's just me.

Linux fonts are great! If you take the high quality TrueType fonts from your Windows partition, Freetype2 renders the text extremely sharply. The only renderer I've seen that is better than FT2 is BitStream's FontFusion (found in QNX RtP) and the only reason I like it better is because it is less heavy-handed with the anti-aliasing. Certainly, FT2 blows away Windows' font rendering. Compare Arial in FT2 to Arial in XP, and you'll notice that FT2 renders the text visibly more clearly.

Because it isn't "X-Windows". It is either "X" or "X Window System." Release specific names follow the format of "X<version>R<release>," with the latest being X11R6.5.1, IIRC.

See man 7 X for more details.

those of us who aren't interested in low-level issues, ... (a la X Window)?

Anyways, the greatest documentation of all to learn form is, was, and always will be source code.

Use a small Linux distro if you don't want to but any of the precooked terminals.

TinyX handles X for Linux, Unix and BSD
RDesktop handles Terminal Services for NT4TSE and Windows 2000
The Metaframe Client does, obviously, Metaframe on your Windows and Solaris app servers.

No, the transparent menu effect that Mosfet made for his liquid theme (and will now get added to kde 3.0 builtin themes I think) takes a snapshot of the area behind the menu and uses that image to make a pseudo-translucent effect.

Not a very good way of doing it in my opinion, and this becomes clear when you move through the different menus in a menubar, you can see the ghosts of the menu you had previously opened beneath your current menu.

If there is a better way of doing it, I'm not sure what it is, although I think you can do true translucent effects with Keith Packard's XRender extension.

But it doesn't seem that anyone is using that to do translucency so either its really hard to use or theres problems. I'd love to know which it is if anyone has some more information.

PS - No offense to Mosfet or anyone else using this code to do translucent menus, it's a very good idea and I do use it when I'm in KDE. I just think it'd be cool to have it without the little quirks like seeing things behind the menu that shouldn't be there.

Just to nit-pick...
XFree86 is released under the XFree86 License, not GPL.

OK, for those who can't copy/paste, here it is again: The RENDER extension

translucent.png

http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render/translucent. png .

And, an alternative to X http://www.directfb.org/screenshots/gimp.png

I must admit I am rather unfamiliar with this, but according to XFree86.org, ``Support for other operating systems, such as FreeBSD, is underway''.

Sound (emu10k) would often not work, needing a few reboots (mind you.. this never happened with Linux, so it shouldn't be a hardware issue).

I think I know what you are talking about. My machine (which runs FreeBSD only, and has for quite some time) will occasionally just play loud random noise instead of music. So far it has only happened a few times, and rebooting fixes it, which is very odd for something that isn't Windows. Could somebody point me in the direction of more information on this?

Ports would often not fetch or build, because they depend on some other port with a specific version, which in turn isn't available anymore.

Now that one is incredibly easy to fix, just modify the Makefile, and I have only run in to this about 5 or 6 times anyway, not often by any means of the word, and I have installed nearly everything in the ports tree (need to get a new hard drive soon because of it).

Securelevels are nice, but as soon as you rise em one above the lowest you cannot start X anymore, so this gets ruled out for workstations.

A lot of FreeBSD machines are not workstations. However, a few more levels where X is usable might be nice, that I will agree with.

CVSupping the source is nice, but what for? I got the same with apt-get upgrade and it finished faster.

I don't even know how long it takes, because I just have it run as a cron job weekly, so that I don't even need to deal with it. I don't see how that would be a real issue.

Compiling from source is nice, but I didn't see any improvements over binary packages.

You can download binary packages for FreeBSD as well as the source ports. See this page in The FreeBSD Handbook for a good explanation of the differences between packages and ports.

This has been in XFree86 for quite some time now (although it's not called ClearType). Have a look around XFree86.org. It has a much more detailed explanation of it. It actually gives some numbers.

You want the X Resize And Rotate extension, short RandR. This extension will probably be in an upcoming release of XFree86. It's already in the kdrive server (mostly for handhelds). It allows the dynamic resize and rotation of the root X Window. You can also change the root depth without restarting.

As for the network transparency, useful as it seems to be to many people, does it need to be tied to the video functions?

It is not tied to video functions.

I, also, had these initial exeperiences with XFree86, but it really didn't take much "learning the hard way" to realize that one is best served buying hardware using the compatibility lists. A few months back, it appears iffy whether the ATI Rage 128 was even supported (depending on the version of XFree86).

Ensuring compatible hardware from the onset makes life not only easier but possible. Then, 10 minute installs are the norm. This is mainly due to each OS (Windows, Linux, etc.) supporting what hardware it can (or getting vendors to do it). This is a practical reality.

I recommend building new computers by hand following the lists published by XFree86 and your OS vendor of choice (RedHat, *BSD, etc.). I know some people scoff at the thought of building computers by hand. However, my hand built computers always seem rock-solid and easy to work with, while many mass-marketed computers from <big name company> always seem pretty flaky with built-in upgrade barriers.

Does that mean it could be possible to have a truely transparent terminal?

Yup - see the bottom of this page. Now, I *am* curious as to how fast this is in a real world system. And knowing how KDE works right now, it will porobably be easy to turn on and off (like current font and icon antialiasing), both explictly, and in a warm, fuzzy "Quality slider".

--
Evan

I think it actually is possible with the render extension. If you check out keith packard's page that tells about it he has a screenshot of a hacked FVWM where the menus are translucent. check it out here.

Of course maybe it isn't possible, I would have thought the Eterm developers or someone would have made a terminal program to use this ability already.

no, `X Windows' is not the proper name for the X Window System. more info

Can someone *please* come up with a spec for overhauling font management in X? Overhauling X in general? Just steal display PDF from Apple/Adobe?

Xrender is an extension to the X protocol implemented in XFree86 that is resposible for the anti-aliasing in Qt/KDE. It supports Porter/Duff operations for image composition (true alpha blending) and elements found in DisplayPDF (paths, transformations, etc...). A good introduction to Xrender ideas and why the current X protocol was "blundered" are here. I especially like the part:

At one meeting, members of the X11 team looked around the table and discovered that not one of them had any clue about splines. Instead of doing something wrong, they left them out.

That pretty much sums up the hackery that is the X Window System.

Cryptnotic

There is a "clearification" by the original email author. Check it out by clicking "Next Message" in the original article or

http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/xpert/2001-August /011023.html

I think that this narritive and background were needed before the public relation email address was paraded around.

XFree86 has received word by Trident Microsystems, Inc.
that there was never a change in policy.
My wording in this posting may have been a little inaccurate.
I've tried to put together some more facts in a further posting.

Egbert.

XFree86 has received word by Trident Microsystems, Inc.
that there was never a change in policy.
My wording in this posting may have been a little inaccurate.
I've tried to put together some more facts in a further posting.

Egbert.