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Xinerama Part of X

Posted by Hemos on from the putting-in-the-standard dept.

A reader writes "Xinerama will be part of X. "This is the FIRST and ONLY case of XFree86 code going into the shared implementation" Read more at http://www.xfree86.org/#xinerama. Does this mean even better movies? Or, are they only concerned with technical quality?"

4 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Movies? by daegol · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Huh? What does this have to do with movies? I thought xinerama was just the standard for multihead setups.

  2. XFree - X by crow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The significance here is that The Open Group's official X11 codebase will incorporate Xinerama code from XFree86. While X11 has incorporated bug fixes, this is the first time they've taken significant non-bug-fix code from XFree86.

    Personally, I don't see this as too big of a deal. The Open Group hasn't done any real development since they shut down the Cambridge RI four years ago and sold off the Grenoble RI. (I was employed at the Cambridge Research Institute at the time.) Apparently they're going to do another release of X, but since they don't have a development team, any new code has to come from outside.

  3. Quick kudos to the XFree86 team by Outland+Traveller · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When open source success stories are swapped over the corporate campfires, Apache and Linux are quick to be mentioned. However, XFree86 predates them both, and comprises a much larger tarball! XFree86 has been around so long that perhaps people take it for granted and assume that it has been there.

    However, far away from the public spotlight XFree86 was at first spurned by the X consortium of extremely well-funded corporate players, and then grudgingly accepted, and now is the leading force in X development. Now that's an open source success story.

    1. Re:Quick kudos to the XFree86 team by Guy+Harris · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.