Apple Releases Beta 3 of X11

maxentius writes "Apple says the just released beta of X11 adds: pseudocolor (8-bit) visual plane support; option to quit X11 without presenting warning dialog; Command-Q keyboard shortcut to quit X11; Command-, to bring up preferences dialog; keyboard mappings with dead keys fixed; linking against libGL no longer results with multiple definitions of glGetColorTableEXT; locked files left behind in /tmp no longer block non-admin users from starting X11; windows can be resized by user to any size and not be limited by the Dock's height; dragging remotely hosted windows no longer causes crash; hardware accelerated scrolling in 16 bit mode now works; X server no longer crashes if application tried to retrieve data back from the framebuffer using XGetImage; bug fixes and other feature enhancements."

Comments

I'd go with "a good sign of progression" myself

[RalphBNumbers]

They include alot of big improvements in almost every beta release. I think it's a sign of Apple's good quality standards (well, that and an interest in avioding support issues) that they're still calling them betas, alot of companies release far buggier and less feature complete software as 1.0 versions.

Re:How much longer are we going to get betas?

[birdman666]

I personally think it's nice that they are releasing betas to the general public for these projects. People have been playing around with betas of apple software for years, I'm sure multiple people who are reading this have installed 'Rhapsody'. So instead of making people who prefer to be on the bleeding edge of the MacOS obtain their beta products using methods not exactly 'legal', they just let us have them with the warning that they aren't quite perfect yet. For some reason, Apple people just can't wait for new products to come out. I appreciate Apple giving us our crack now, rather than making us wait for it.

Re:Quit without warning: how?

[CableModemSniper]

Well, if you would read their FAQ, you might've noticed this:
Added an option to quit X11 without presenting warning dialog : "defaults write com.apple.x11 no_quit_alert true". See man page for Xquartz for more details.

Re:How much longer are we going to get betas?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

iSync 1.0 has been out for months.

Re:Quit without warning: how?

[aberkvam]

RTFM.

From the FAQ:

Added an option to quit X11 without presenting warning dialog : " defaults write com.apple.x11 no_quit_alert true". See man page for Xquartz for more details.

And from the man XQuartz page:

CUSTOMIZATION

Xquartz can also be customized using the defaults(1) com-
mand. The available options are:

defaults write com.apple.x11 enable_fake_buttons true
Equivalent to the -fakebuttons command line
option.

defaults write com.apple.x11 fake_button2 modifiers
Equivalent to the -fakemouse2 option.

defaults write com.apple.x11 fake_button3 modifiers
Equivalent to the -fakemouse3 option.

defaults write com.apple.x11 keymap_file filename
Equivalent to the -keymap option.

defaults write com.apple.x11 no_quit_alert true
Disables the alert dialog displayed when attempt-
ing to quit X11.

defaults write com.apple.x11 depth depth
Equivalent to the -depth option.

What are the "killer" X11 apps I should have

[phpsocialclub]

What are some cool/usefull X11 apps that I can install on a OS X 10.2 machine

I have already used fink to install Bluefish (a html editor), XMMS (mp3 player), and tkcvs (cvs client).

and some games, scorched earth, etc.

anyone have any good ideas of other stuff that I should be running on my laptop or desktop g4s

Re:What are the "killer" X11 apps I should have

[capmilk]

xbill, xtank and xgalaga are pretty cool. I mean, you wanted "killer" apps. ;)

Re:What are the "killer" X11 apps I should have

[Anonymous Coward]

Well KDE is pretty damned cool... I like running koffice...

Re:What are the "killer" X11 apps I should have

[eMilkshake]

Well, grab yourself some fink and then fink commander and look for all those gnome things you used to love.

But, you'll definately want to grab LyX. Then, wonder off and get TeXShop and start churning out some TeX to amaze your friends with your superfine equation-writing sk1llz.

Re:What are the "killer" X11 apps I should have

[JJSpreij]

Then, wonder off and get TeXShop

TeXShop runs just fine without X11 ;-)

Re:What are the "killer" X11 apps I should have

[shayborg]

GIMP is a great basic image editing app. LaTeX is very useful as well, as is Ghostview. (I never could get it working in Mac OS 9.) AxyFTP is also a solid, if unspectacular, FTP client, and is a good choice if you're familiar with WS_FTP.

-- shayborg

Cool!

[PrimeWaveZ]

I can feel the difference in xMahJongg. Now if I could only get my ASCII porn stuff to look better under hardware acceleration, I'd be set. Oh well, something for the next update. Hehehe.

Hardware Accelerated XDarwin coming

[dochood]

I wonder how this beta will compare with the hardware-accelerated X-Darwin that is coming (4.3)...

The last XDarwin would run KDE 3.0.7 just fine, but the Apple beta would freeze the whole machine when I ran it... that's the primary reason I want X11 (and for Gimp...)

I'm dowloading the new Apple beta now...

dochood

Re:How much longer are we going to get betas?

[Luxviaest]

Not only do I agree with your comment, I also happen to think that they are releasing them to the public so that those people who happen to be within the programming community can check out the programs and help Apple debug them far more quickly then they could on their own. Another factor which comes into play is the concept of bragging rights that come with the release of say a new X11 client, or a brand new web browser.

Just my 2 cents...

Re:How much longer are we going to get betas?

[EddydaSquige]

I think that apple released a beta of iSync not because it wanted to, but because palms support for OS X was so lacking and that was effecting consumer opinion of the Mac.

As far as Safari and X11 go, these are built upon open source, and while they don't have to realease to the public for debugging, it is the norm.

ghostview, rasmol, texmac ,gimp, xemacs, tex2im

[goombah99]

ghostview. currently I have not found any programs as good as ghostview for manipulating eps files without losing resolution.

rasmol is the workhorse molecular graphics program

texmac is TeX with a really nice realtime wysiwyg, pallete and menu driven setup.

gimp is the Gnu answer to photoshop. about as powerful though a little less freindly and fast.

tex2im turns TeX equations into graphics. I use this with Keynote as an equation creator. (there are some other solutions too). well its not an X app but the other programs that do this are.

Fink Support

[Dunedain]

Having run into this last night, please be aware that Fink's system-xfree86 package doesn't support Apple X11 0.3 yet. I'm sure that support will come soon, but it was awfully disconcerting pulling a powerbook out of its box, grabbing X11, the SDK, and Fink, and watching it mysteriously fail.

Full-screen mode?

[semanticgap]

I tried Apple's X11, but couldn't figure out how to run it full-screen with WindowMaker. (I wouldn't need this had Apple provided virtual desktops that could be switched as fast as WindowMaker does it).... So I gave up and went back to XDarwin.

Re:Still randomly quits...

[Drakino]

I had similar issues, and sent my crash log to someone at Apple to look at. A few hours later, I had the response of "stop unsanity from patching X11". Aka, one of the hacks to OS X that I installed from Unsanity.com was causing problems. I pulled all of them out, and the last beta started working fine.

I need to send the crash log over to those folks so they can narrow down what was happening.

But does it have applescript support?

[acomj]

I have apples X and I use Xemacs. Is there a easy way to make emacs or any X application act like a regular apple application? (You click on the icon it goes. Drag document to icon and it starts..).

I tried some quick applescript things but they didn't work. /Aram