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First Xouvert Milestone Released
An anonymous reader writes "
The first milestone of xouvert, the X-server replacement has been released. Xouvert includes MAS giving the X server its very own sound server. Nice. :) Also, just noticed that enlightenment quietly released an update to the 0.16 series.
" (Here's a link to the Xouvert download page.)
People complain about X a lot, but when it's all boiled down there really isn't much to complain about. X is a great windowing system.
I have been pwned because my
For the non-french speaking under you: Xouvert means "X open".
yet another X server/manager to try. *sigh* It'd be nice if we could get everyone to focus all their energy on making the current X managers to play nice rather than go off and make more. freedesktop.org is a nice start towards fixing the linux desktop, methinks.
-jp
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
It seems at least to me that the freedesktop.org x server (kdrive) is where the interesting stuff is happening, but we'll see how the Xouvert guys get on.
Now that you are replacing X, I think its time to freeze over toolkit hell. Hardcode in QT into the server, make it ultra fast and remove the legacy apps such as Xterm, Xeyes and replace them with kdebase, then replace the T with a K to symbolize the intergration with X, Open, and KDE.
Then, port the legacy apps such as Gimp, Evoloution, OpenOffice to the new API. Then, we can finally realise the linux desktop dream.
I realise I'm going to get flamed by GTK fanboys, but at the end of the day, QT has the decent file dialog, the speed and the flexiblility that GTK hasn't.
Xouvert represents far more then merely tranparent windows etc, it represents a move to a more recognisable OSS model of working. XFree86 is charterised by a fairly closed development process, long patch intergration times, and close control by the steering group. I am greatly looking forward to seeing a true open source methodolgy accelerate development.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Just nice? It's excelent! This is the biggest X Windowing achievement since first actual implementation of X Windows.
It is in human nature to assotiate visual and audio information in the process of percepting it. Therefore video without audio mean seriously broken usability. That's why I think all these years X Windows has been developed in essentially wrong direction. The made in recent XFree86 versions transparency, which is really just a candy, while so important prime functionality was missed all the time.
I am really happy that MAS in Xouvert now. I am going to switch to Xouvert as soon as possible. Good-bye, XFree86 - thank you for keeping me in the void silence all these years.
Less is more !
No you're not. Check his post history, he's just an idiot ;).
..is an answer to Apple's Quartz 2D rendering capabilities.
Linux isn't going to make a dent in the desktop world until it's significantly better than MS windows, not just politically, but in ease of use, quality of rendering, integration, etc, etc.
Linux already does OpenGL. Take the next step; Apple's already shown you what to do.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Xouvert has its own sound engine, MAS. If Xouvert catches on, does this mean that the sound engines of KDE and gnome will become obsolete, or will they collide with MAS?
If they collide, it basically means that KDE and gnome will have to support both X11 and Xouvert. I'm not sure if that is achievable. On the other hand, if they don't collide what's the use of MAS? I'm pretty happy with the way it works now. So I'll then continue working without MAS.
Please login to access my lawn
Read the explanation on the freedesktop site. There they mention the fact that people developed X on really old VAX machines. I even ran X myself on an old VAXStation II which had several times less memory than your average palmtop computer, hardware which happens to run X as well.
I would love to, but I rely on the networked abilities of Xfree86 and it's very specific command/network protocols to talk to the number of stand alone X terminals I have.
if your project does not adhere to the old protocols exactly it's of no use to me, or a large number of other people/businesses.
Can I connect from a X server to a Xovert server and run remotely?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
sound *server*.. (esound/nas) ?
why not use alsalib or libaudiofile?
can anyone tell me what network-transparent sound is going to offer me besides bloat?
I mean, I just want sound to be played *fast*. Why would anyone in Tokio need to play sound on my desktop in Swahili.
pleaz. just gimme STANDARDIZED FAST LOCAL sound. I have other apps for downloading, and a desktop needs no networked sound gook.
I've used NAS for quite some time now. many apps are already compatable with it. (madplay mpg123 xmms gnome sound server) and it works great for X terminals to get sound (and hogs network bandwidth like no tomorrow)
is MAS anything like NAS? is it compatable?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't understand why YOU were posted flamebait, and the notoric liar hasn't been modded down at all.
Will you lazy moderators at least do some research when you're told?
He claims to be working for AT&T, Apple, Honda, and now for the Xouvert project. He's also doing someone else's taxes, and he's transmission engineer.
If you don't believe me, then read his history.
I'm posting this as AC because the moderators seems to be a bit out of control.
So you like it when every friggin' applications uses its own toolkit? Hello? Does consistency mean anything to you?
The owls are not what they seem
The subject pretty much says it all ...
Read this or this for more info.
Death to ESD/ARTS today!! (and maybe even JACK, if we can low enough latency).
Sunny Dubey
What are these other things that this Goddess does? Does she look like Xena the warrior princess? Xena starts with an "X"....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Yes, it means "stagnation". Windows is a good example: a lousy GUI that will remain lousy forever because it has to be "consistant". No experimentation means no progress.
Given that most people use only one word processor, one browser, one email client etc. the consistancy argument is no more rational than insisting that your TV should have the same controls as your car.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
As said before this guy appears *not* to be a Dev on the Xouvert project.
Have a read through some of his previous posts on other topics.
Thanks.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Check your facts before blurting out. QT is available under the Gnu Public Licence!
e .h tml
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/freelicens
I think the following should settle your fears.
//end direct quote from site.
From their site
"Many of the visually impaired have finely tuned auditory sensibilities, allowing them to react quickly to sound. From its beginning, MAS was designed to handle timing issues exceedingly well. It was optimized to provide tight synchronization of multiple media streams. More importantly, for users dependent on audio cues, it is designed to stop some functions and start others quickly. For example, a user, hearing the opening syllables of a menu option, can either select it or move to another option without waiting for a complete articulation of the option. MAS's original accessibility requirements, developed with leading accessibility authorities, included:
* Ability to stop utterances quickly
* Controllable low latency
* Format independent media handling
* High audio quality
* Multiplexing--with priorities
* Small memory footprint
* Synchronization of multiple media stream
"MAS enables low-latency Internet conferencing and telephony. Automatic bandwidth measurements and MAS's dynamically-switchable CODECs insure that the conference quality scales from 56K modems to T1 lines".
"MAS integrates with a compatible X11 server on your desktop. It processes graphic information locally, alleviating the need for network transmission of uncompressed graphical content. Graphic events are easily synchronized with audio events for professional-quality multimedia and accessibility-enabled applications."
"MAS handles network-distributed media processing and intricate format configuration tasks. It continually measures system performance and adjusts its actions depending on the available system resources. The longer it runs, the better it knows your system".
Obviously this has been designed for performance/scalability.Of course the real trial is actually running it for yourself but give it a chance before you write it off.
You know, you are right. And it's by design. And it's well known. I remember several years ago CmdrTaco posting an article to discuss just that particular topic. IIRC, if you put in a comment as an AC, then you can't moderate comments attached to that article you posted against, just as if you had posted from your normal account.
/does/ get logged, you know). There is rarely any true anonymity in this world. It's not a bad thing, unless you are doing something wrong...
It's all well known about, and well documented. The idea of the AC account is that nobody knows who you are, but admin can always find out things anyway (stuff
Ok. I see now. I just didn't realize before that standards organizations like IEEE are just stagnating the development. What a revelation! How far our technology would have developed already if we just didn't hang on to standards. Who the hell needs consistency anyway?
a lousy GUI that will remain lousy forever
Linux desktop will remain lousy as long as the distro manufacturers refuse to create a common set of rules for a standard Linux application toolkit.
Having such a standard would not stop a pro like you from reconfiguring your desktop to your liking, but it would make the initial desktop look the same on every distro and thus easily adapted by a newbie.
On a more personal note, the mishmash of different toolkits (run xawtv and some kde applications side by side and you'll see what I mean) just makes the GUI look so goddamn ugly and cumbersome to use ("now did I move the scrollbar in this application with the mouse middle button or with the left?" etc.).
The owls are not what they seem
OK for your input, I approve totally the lack of esd, arts, ...
However, Jack is useful if you need syncing several sources : jack is not a mixer (but can host one), it's a high end synchronisation framework.
The ouput of jack is often alsa, but could be ardour for example. How can you do that with dmix ?
Xouvert IS a X server.
A consistent GUI allows for the things you learned in your word processor to be reused in your browser, e-mail client, etc. Thanks to the thousand of toolkits, desktop environments, support libraries, sound backends, printer support solutions, etc. that's plain impossible in X. So a user has to spend lots of time relearning how to do simple tasks for each application he uses (and mixing them up after learning them). That ruins productivity!
Wether someone runs one or onehundred word processors is absolutly irelevant to the GUI consistency discussion.
Regards, Tobias
Yes. It's the same code, they're just trying to open up the development process a bit to get new features in faster.
Disclaimer: English isn't my first language either
under in english means a physical location. In other langugase such as german (unter) it can also describe sub-group from a mass of things. In english I would us the word among to describe that fact. So your sentence would look like this
For the non-french speaking among you: Xouvert means "X open".
JACK and Dmix seems to have entirely different aims.
JACK can be a 'pipe' for audio applications - so you can have an mp3 player and an effects processor and you can pipe the audio from one to the other. It allows them to access the sound HW also, but that's not the main feature.
Dmix seems to be focused on accessing the sound device, although with nice additions, e.g. sample rate conversion, which is handy if you use the digital I/O of your card and want to play something other than 44.1/48 kHz files.
Real life is overrated.
Windows seem somewhat consistent because the widget sets people try to look relatively close to the "official" look, but that make differences in behaviour even more annoying - should I use Alt+F4 or Ctrl+W to close an application window, for instance? There are no safe visual clues to indicate that an app is likely to behave different.
The "consistent" Windows UI is a myth.
You insensitive clod!
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Does MAS collide with ALSA (assuming a Linux box), or it works above ALSA?
> I'm a developer on the xouvert project,
Never trust anyone with a slashdot ID = 150,000
--AROS is an Open Source AmigaOS clone, and source compatible with AmigaOS! Try the x86 build at http://www.aros.org
Swahili is a language , not a country!
Sir, may I suggest you RTFA? Xouvert is a fork of XFree86. The current release is basically exactly the same as the current release of XFree86, but with a handful of extras. Since they are the same thing with different names, I suspect they may just be compatible.
(a) Windows' GUI is not consistent. No two versions of Office use the same controls, and no version of Office has ever used the standard Windows controls. And by default Windows XP looks totally different from any preceding version of Windows.
(b) MacOS X has a consistent GUI. It is most definitely not a lousy GUI. It is more advanced than any OSS GUI that I've ever used.
(c) You are making things up.
It's not a bad thing, unless you are doing something wrong...
Or unless somebody thinks what you're doing is wrong. Better to just say, "On the internet you're going to get logged and there's not a whole lot you can do about it."
Never trust anyone with a slashdot ID = 150,000
What about slashdot ID == 150,001?
What about slashdot ID == 149,999?
Aaaaaa, fuck slashdot.
(cheesiest post I ever made)
Like what I said? You might like my music
People defend X a lot, but when it's all boiled down there really isn't much to defend. X is a terrible windowing system.
After checking out the following screenshot: http://freedesktop.org/~keithp/screenshots/sharp_s hadow.png and then reading the contents of the X-Chat window, specifically, "I'm hoping to do things that won't be fast enough with 2D/3D hardware as it exists today.", I have to ask: Who really wants all this shadowing, and translucent windows, and animated desktop graphics? I mean seriously, what's the point? Does it help you get you work done? Does it increase your productivity? I see it being more of a nuisance and distraction.
It certainly shows that Mr. Packard works for HP, what with him writing software that would require users to purchase new hardware just to have the next generation desktop. Hell, the desktop might as well be free, if we have to shell out the dough to purchase a new video card.
Because it's cheaper and good enough. That combination wins every time. It does not have to be better.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
So what I am wondering is whether or not this new sound extension will work across the network?
Can I log into my machine from another and have the sound come with it?
This could be a serious step forward for projects like LTSP that rely on kludges to get network-transparency for sound..
I like X and I've used it for 12 years now and have been programming at the Xlib level for about 5 years but EVEN NOW I still have to get out
my venerable Xlib programming reference when I'm writing an app that requires liberal use of sophisticated colour. Read only , read write colourmaps etc, all these different types of
visuals , Oh My God , who the hell designed this colour system?? Why the hell do I need a visual? Just give me colour X or the nearest equivalent , I don't give a damn HOW many colours
the graphics card can/can't do , you work it out Mr X server , it should not be my problem.
Yep, the word 'wrong' is open to interpretation alright. Let say 'illegal' then.
And you are right, just about everything is logged, and there's not a whole lot anybody can do about it. And you know, most of it is because of the minority who abuse situations that most wouldn't... such a pity.
Hold your hourses, there *for a while*
... and as it turns out this 'MAS' isn't there. *and one of them, didn't even know about what MAS was, untill he read this slashdot post...*
I've just steped by #xouvert
So it's not even included in the sources.... etc.
*though*, who knows, what the futre will behold.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
that make differences in behaviour even more annoying - should I use Alt+F4 or Ctrl+W to close an application window, for instance?
I have never seen an application for which Alt+F4 doesn't work, and if there are any, it would be a violation of the Microsoft UI guidelines (Available here). Ctrl+W doesn't appear to actually be standardised, but as a de-facto standard often closes the document you're working with, rather than the entire application. Hope this helps!
Why not use ALSA? Probably because Xouvert is designed to be used on Unix, not just Linux. ALSA being the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture and all.
How about a nice cup of STFU? Firstly, there is NO comparing the quality of implementation of esound and MAS (latency in esound is absolutely horrendous for a start). Secondly, what if I want to run KDE applications (which need artsd)? Guess I'm out of luck, huh?
When you're advocating the UNIX approach you first have to check that it makes sense. Does it make sense with utilities like uniq, sort, awk, sed, etc.? Yes! These utilities can serve multiple functions depending on how you put them together. A sound server performs ONE function, and pretty much everyone can agree on whether it does that worse/better than other sound servers. The reason we have multiple (crappy, I might add) sound servers now is politics. Nobody wants to use the others' sound server, because that would (as they see it) be admitting defeat. Hint: It isn't.
There is NO reason to have multple incompatible sound servers other than stubbornness on the side of the developers.
I just want ONE sound server implementation that works. "What if the implementation is no good?", you say? Well, that's what forks are for! This is what has happened with XFree86, and perhaps more famously egcs, where it lead to egcs actually becoming the new gcc.
It is my understanding that the MAS server is a separate application that just uses the networking infrastructure of X for network transparency and security. There is no reason that a graphical X interface has to be running to support that, only the networking portion of X is necessary for that. This can be linked into the MAS server without any additional overhead. As a special bonus we also get unified security, which means fewer potential holes. (Have you ever looked at the networking portions of existing sound servers? Eeeeek. No proper security infrastructure whatsoever...)
Rant over. Good day.
Next release: April 1st... Hmm... :)
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
I did RTFA and nowhere did it claim 100% compatability. nor does it claim that is what they are striving for.
I have tried too many "forks" of X that say they might be compatable to find someone had "fixed" something that broke compatability with the remote X functionality.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Also, just noticed that enlightenment quietly released an update to the 0.16 series."
uh... that was over a month ago, on November 5th. It was a good little bugfix release, though.
I've seen this post so many times about how much X or XFree sucks. Please enlighten me because I seem to be living in an alternate dimension. Right now at my house, I have a large dual-Athlon basement machine running headless. My main X term upstairs is a $40 used PII with a good graphics card and no hard drive. I cannot perceive a performance difference between this machine with applications, scrolling, switching desktops, etc, with the 2GHz P4 running WinXP at work. I can play fullscreen NTSC quality videos over the network. Everything but page-flipping games run flawlessly, and I'm sure cheap gigabit would solve even that problem.
In the living room I have a 1GHz Athlon game box that runs all sorts of games and emus at 60 frames per second fullscreen with no problem.
My wife runs a PII system with a good Matrox card and other than slow load times for some apps, the graphics performance (scrolling, menuing, maximizing, etc) is superb.
Where is the horrible performance? Windows is supposed to be so much better, but I have yet to see a window that didn't shear when "Show Contents when moving/resizing" was turned on. That's why I turn it off and use the outline. And, by the way, no matter how fast your graphics updates are, you will always get shearing on a CRT, unless you blast your updates while the electron gun is returning to the top corner. I imagine that would add a great deal of complexity to the windowing system, which is probably why it hasn't been done on either platform, just so a tiny part of daily work will "look better".
I just wonder what I've been doing right with these systems (all running XFree), especially since I'm pretty picky about graphics performance.
I see, you're simply anti-unix. You think there should be one monolitic application that has everything integrated to it. Is too damn much work for you to type "esd &".
You seem to be ignoring the fact that using multiple sound servers is a pain in the ass. Whenever you adjust volumes on one server, the setting will be different from the other servers or even the basic pcm volume you get from the driver. Multiple sound servers interfere with each other and is a bad idea.
I prefer just using ALSA and skipping sound servers entirely.
i didn't know raster and mandrake were still making software.. I had been the biggest enlightenment fan for a long time but switched got [black|flux]box last year.
i spoke with raster once when he did did a small talk with keith packard.
Oh, you want a gui for it? Look in KDE 3.2, look up resize and rotate. (might be in earlier stuff, but I am running cvs so I can't check)
Certainly looks like it does to me running 4.3...
Have you *looked* at any modern config utilities, or are you just blowing smoke? (I certainly know why my guess is.) Seriously, go look at Xconfigurator from Red Hat, also used in other Distros. That's the great thing about it... it auto-detects the card, and will get it running (even if in VESA mode)
replace the T with a K [in Xouvert] to symbolize the intergration with X, Open, and KDE.
That is just wrong. "Xouvert" should be renamed "Kouvert". "X" should be renamed "K". And stop calling the OS "Linux". It should be known as "Kinux".
I think you are a closet GTK fanboy yourself.
To be honest, I don't see how someone expressing themselves freely is stopping you from expressing yourself freely, or your right to life, or your pursuit of happiness.
You still have the right to make slanderous remarks against him, and nobody is stopping you. Nobody is censoring you either - your comment is her for everyone to see, if they decide to look at it. The right of free speach doesn't imply the right to enforce your views on anyone else, and also doesn't imply that everyone has to listen to you (or read what you say).
Anyway, this is just a flamebait seeking AC anyway, so why am I even bothering...?
You may want to mention something more than "disgusting" in your sig... like "pops up a bajillion moving goatse/rotten.com images."
Just a thought.
I'm pleasantly surprised to see that Xouvert is using the Arch revision control system.
Does anyone know if you have to create individual UNIX user accounts for Arch users as you do with CVS? I've always hated that about CVS.
Why keeping a project in an alpha/beta state is a bad idea. I used to use E a long time ago, but they never went 1.0, and all the distros just started ignoring it, so now I use Sawfish.
This is a real pet peeve of mine. There are many OSS projects that do this. OpenSSL, anyone? The question is, why?? There must be a stable enough "beta" version of E that could be considered production quality, and should have been bumped up to 1.0 release status. I know that this is the case for OpenSSL, and a lot of other OSS projects out there. The fact is companies and non-hackers don't like adopting software that's advertised as "beta" quality. If you wan't your project recognized in the Real World, step up to the plate.
I know this sounds like a whining rant, but I belive that the plethora of OSS projects forever stuck in a "beta testing" phase is one reason for hesitation for mainstream adoption of Linux.
Xouvert includes MAS giving the X server its very own sound server.
Just in time for X-MAS. How convenient.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
I'm beginning to get really annoyed with these 'Linux needs to innovate' posts. It's like some virulent new troll.
Presumably MAS will throw the sound straight to Dmix if it is available, and the X clients are on the same host as the server.
So you're soaking up your entire network bandwidth with display. What about people that actually need their network for.. you know.. networking?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Asking for consistency between desktop environments is unreasonable. For one thing, it imposes a burden on developers who are ultimately trying to scratch their own itch. For another thing, nobody asks for consistency between MacOS and Windows environments, yet KDE and gnome have no reason to be any more similar than those two. The fact that they both use the same server application (X) is irrelevant - the projects themselves are as different as chalk and cheese (one written in C, one in C++; one using bonobo for IPC, one using something else, one focussed towards strict HIG, one using different UI guidelines etc.) and it is quite remarkable that they coexist as well as they do. If you stick to one or the other then you get consistency, just as you want. If you mix and match, that's your lookout.
Besides which, have you ever really considered the "consistency" of Windows apps? Internet Explorer has a different feel to Office apps, which in turn are different to apps made by third parties (nobody will convince me that Windows Explorer's CD-burning capability shares anything in terms of look or feel with Roxio CD Creator, or that Excel is consistent with Quattro Pro).
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
In general, X traffic is pretty lightweight. While using most apps, the traffic will range from 5K-150K/sec, with very brief spikes in the 1-2M range. Streaming NTSC video does sustain about 3-4M/sec, but if that is a normal activity, then remote connectivity is not the best configuration for that use.
In a production X-Term environment, you would likely keep the display and data networks on separate switches, so they shouldn't collide. In addition, I've found that once you get the applications working remotely, the amount of data traffic goes down tremendously, since the remote app running on the server can access data directly from the hard drive subsystem, rather than having a local client app accessing all its data over a network via file handles or sql queries.
It just got in the 4.3 series and was only available via CVS for a long time.
Considering even Windows 3.1 had the ability to modify its resolution instantly, I really do have to wonder what took so freaking long that a decade was needed for this to happen.
Here comes the part where people chime in about how one shouldn't need to change resolutions on the fly, then the people who design websites chime in and say they use it to test websites. Me? I just think--heaven forbid--that a modern GUI should allow the user to modify their resolution instantly. Maybe I have my reasons?
"Sufferin' succotash."
And, by the way, no matter how fast your graphics updates are, you will always get shearing on a CRT, unless you blast your updates while the electron gun is returning to the top corner.
Longhorn will use a 3D buffer. There will be no shearing ever again, even for old apps. When will KDE or GNOME get this (serious question)?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Xouvert includes MAS giving the X server its very own sound server.
Hmm, am I the only one that thinks of X-mas when reading that line?.
Of course, they're being critical of XFree86. The mere existence of Xouvert is implicit criticism. Also, who says the XFree86 origranization is "slow, bloated and more or less unable to keep XFree86 in a constant, modern state." What does that even mean?
I'm a user. I just want better software. I don't think I get better software when developers worry more about ideology and personal spite than implementing new ideas with good code.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Actually, this is isn't correct -- having spent too many years programming video games in the 80s-90s, I'll have a shot at explaining...
You fix the problem of onscreen redraw glitches simply by using double (or triple) buffering - all updates are then drawn to an off-screen back-buffer instead of to the visible surface, and once the back-buffer update is complete you wait until the next vsync (when the CRT is in an offscreen period) and 'flip' the visible surface out, bringing the newly drawn one into view.
Double buffering is simpler to code than triple buffering, but any system implementing either of these will still have a pretty simple API to call, and both will be similar (if not identical if you plan correctly) -- the tricky stuff all happens 'behind the scenes', usually implemented with a combination of interrupts, threads and code to handle 'surface locking'.
The 'cost' of using double buffering is: you need video memory for both a primary and a secondary surface, you have to write a small piece of (fairly technical) code -- and when you call flipSurfaces() no code can access a visible surface to draw upon until the 'flip' has actually taken place (the next VBlank interrupt), which will likely mean waiting code... tidy screen redraws, but stalling code. :(
If you have enough video memory, you can get around this 'waiting' problem by using triple buffering. It's a bit trickier to implement, and requires three times more memory than an unbuffered display - but you avoid the problem of having a locked back buffer (waiting to become the primary surface) by having the extra (and therefore always 'unlocked') surface ready to return when any code calls getBackBuffer().
When flipping screens (during the CRT gun's offscreen period), the new buffer can be made visible by either copying it to the front buffer (maybe using blt h/w, if available), or by changing some kind of magic memory pointer in the video hardware.
So stopping tearing can in fact be done fairly easily -- a heck of a lot of video games use a double or triple buffering, and have done since at least the early eighties. I don't think any of the PC Windowed-style OSes use this technique yet (...but I don't have a Mac, and with all that transparency and other eye candy I sure hope that they're drawing to an offscreen surface!)
(Sorry for the almost off topic ramble, but I had to satisfy my innermost geek)
Anyone know how or if Bob Scheifler has reacted to this. I remember the rants he would deliver anytime I suggested things like adding sound support into X11 or using the X protocol for printer control.
He created X11, but he also hobbled it and through the attitudes he fostered in his followers he held back X development by at least 10 years.
Sound server support should have been in X11 12 or 13 years ago.
Stonewolf
I have never seen an application for which Alt+F4 doesn't work, and if there are any, it would be a violation of the Microsoft UI guidelines
Aah! So this isn't actually the GUI, but a document. So why not write a document for X and be done with it? After all, if a mere document ensures complete consistancy in Windows, surely a document would do the same in X...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You have correctly identified the competition to MAS: JACK. Some of my colleagues and I have been wondering aloud whether one could build a nice interface to JACK for network audio. It looks like the answer is yes.
As you correctly note, the real issue is latency. Servers like MAS cannot generally promise reasonable latency on the local side: latency matters there (indeed, it's all that matters).
Dmix looks cool too, but as folks have pointed out, it's going to be tough to get it to work with the range of systems X runs on. Unless it's optionally layered atop JACK...
Oh yes just what the Linux and Unix community is yet ANOHTER sound server. That way X itself can tie up the sound card so that OSS, ALSA, ARTS, and eSound all can't access it either. When will there be ONE sound system, or a sound system that allows all these systems to work with your sound card at the same time?
And, I would guess, many OS X users were seduced by the oh - so - beautiful user OS X user interface. I don't use OS X, but I wish I did, at least, if it was open source. (I need to be able to hack my OS.)
OS X uses translucency, antialiasing, smooth shadows around windows, window warping, and 'fancy' things like the launcher bar thing (sorry, Mac users, I don't know the name of it!) at the bottom of the screen. Have you ever actually used OS X? Try it. Go to CompUSA or something and play around with a G5.
Apple's interface makes you forget you're looking at simply a matrix of pixels, which is displaying rectangular regions called 'windows'. The smoothness of everything *far* surpasses anything I have seen in X. I've used KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, IceWM, and others. I've tried hundreds of themes. I've made my own themes. But I still have no good visual cue where the bounds of the focused window are. The drop shadow is, IMO, a great feature. Your peripheral vision picks up the area of the focused window automatically.
I could go on and on, but the point is, some people *do* care about having a beautiful desktop. It is also a usability feature and can make a person more productive.
I spend 70% of my life looking at it, and I want it to be beautiful, dammit.
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
for one, because e didn't align with their new libraries and standards
it needs the old freetype for example, and it didn comply to the NETWM standards (until recently when the released DR16.6)
it is still a very cool WM, certainly when you consider the age of this beast. and rock stable.
now when they get this E17 thing going... just wait and see. i think they might surprise some people overhere.
the people at E.org, raster in particular, don't give a shit what time it will be released, as long as they release something wich is good, and will be good for a long time coming. they take pride in what they do and don't release some half-finished product. personally, i like that attitude. it will be finished when it's finished.
E16 was/is as good as any of those >= 1.0 WMs out there. i still use it every day.
i should've written EMWH instead of NETWM
(bows head in shame)
In a production X-Term environment, you would likely keep the display and data networks on separate switches, so they shouldn't collide.
In the 25+ production X11 environment I've visited, I've never seen this happen.
X11 display traffic is data networking.
1) I think you dont know the meaning of slander. If anything it could possibly be libel, and the way things have been said, it is not even that.
2) Speech isn't spelled speach.
3) You are a fucking idiot.
They made an X-MAS-server ...
Bah-Humbug!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
In the 25+ production X11 environment I've visited, I've never seen this happen.
/home mounted via NFS from NFSBox and also BigBox queried against SQLBox, I could alleviate bandwidth problems by splitting the network into three subnets (NFS, XTerms, SQL), and connect BigBox to each network with a separate NIC. I'm sure switches/routers could do this as well without using different subnets, but I've never tried this.
X11 display traffic is data networking.
I was referring to non-X11 data. The previous post mentioned that I would saturate my network with X11 traffic and thus steal the bandwidth from non-X11 traffic, and I was explaining that one could (if necessary) split the network so that non-X11 traffic would not share the same pipe as X11 traffic.
If I had 20 XTerms connected to BigBox, and BigBox had
Keep in mind that I was using words like would and could. The network would not need to be configured like this.
I was trying to explain what GUI consistency is all about and further claimed that this is a dream that can't be realized in the X-based world. I see that you do agree with me...
... applications in X windows all the time. I want good applications and can't wait for my desktop environment of choice to come up with something useable while a OKish application is available using a different toolkit.
Saying that wanting a consistent GUI on my computer is like asking for MacOSX and Windows to share a GUI is rather hilarious though: I can not run Windows and MacOSX applications on one screen (at least without some virtual PC software) while I need to pick and mix KDE and Gnome and Motif-based and
That the applications are written in different programming languages and are using different communication mechanisms is of absolutly no interest to the user. Pointing to others and claiming that they are no better is no help either. So Linux can't have a consistent UI just because MS did not manage to come up with one or what is that supposed to mean?
Regards, Tobias
The X server itself may not be bloated, but the XFree86 source distribution certainly is. Everything from client libs to Xeyes are included in the build system, and working out how to configure it to only build the parts you need is not an easy task.
And Xouvert is going to be less bloated, and bundle fewer libraries? Get real. It's going to be more bloated than XFree86 ever was from the "sound" of it.
Look at expose, the only decent application of a `tile all windows' command I've yet seen.
Or dialog sheets, allowing me to see through the `would you like to save this unnamed document' to the document its talking about, and therefore know what I'm going to save.
Well about 10 years ago, just down the hall from Jim Gettys' office, they were working on this. It was called audiofile, and basically did for audio what X did for graphics.
I had a "DECaudio" box on my DECstation-5000.. and had audiofile running. It was pretty cool.
looks good so far..
I wish the freedesktop.org xserver would shape up into a complete server.. so far.. I have my money on
fdo's xserver due to its speed. if they implemented some of the xouvert features.. it would be perfection.
Except for the fact that nobody would accept your document as authoritative, because nobody has any authority to produce such a document, except perhaps the X Consortium, who have no interest in producing one, and would almost certainly be unable to agree with the details if there were.
There is generally speaking consisteny in Windows beause MS is accepted as having authority to declare how user interfaces should work there; the same is true of Apple having authority over OSX. Nobody has that authority over X, so it splinters into individual groups (GNOME, KDE, CDE, etc.) who have their own guidelines. So you then need to learn multiple guidelines in order to be able to use the same apps. And there are apps (e.g. emacs) which don't follow any of them.
Remember, X11 is network transparent. I want to make sure that video and audio are in sync.
Bad jokes about *NSYNC aside, how do you plan on sending full-screen full-motion video across a 100BASE-T Ethernet cable? Or does "video" to you mean a 320x240 pixel window?
Can you still do this if your application is not X/MAS-aware?
For one thing, how do you pronounce "X/MAS"? Is it "KRIS-m@s"? For another, you'll probably still be able to start MAS without starting the graphical side of X11.
But as I can see qt code is gpl for Linux. I suppose if someone really wants to port this code to Windows they could do so.
And it is being done.
If no one is going to accept my document as authoritative, then what makes people think that new in-code policies would be accepted in their place?
There are two models that shape GUIs. One is the centralized authority model, where the law is handed down from above, which you ignore at the peril of losing official approval. This is the Windows, NeXT and Apple model. The other way is the decentralized market model, where your vision of the GUI competes with other people's visions. This is the X11R6 way.
You cannot tell people how they must write X11 applications. If you try to impose one toolkit or another on them, they will reject both you and the toolkit. This is how Motif died. You don't control the platform, so you can't dictate the terms of its use. There's no way around this.
Is it confusing for the user to see different widget appearances and different GUI behaviors? Maybe. But it's not much more confusing that the same users being confronted with the myriad other choices the marketplace presents to them. GTK+ versus Qt is not much different than Ford versus Chrysler or Krupps versus Braun. Eventually the GUI policies will approach each other. If you take a look, they are doing so already.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!