Patch 7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the last alpha release of xmx. SERVER Xmx itself has had much of its internals rewritten, in particular, the way it conducts xmx/Xserver dialogs has been rationalized and simplified to enable more complex dialogs. The way the protocol stream is massaged has undergone similar changes - making it less hardcoded. The way colormaps are handled has been rewritten. Rather than pre-allocate read/write chunks of colormap, xmx now allocates colors read-only as needed, making it a more neighborly application and allowing it to nest more cleanly. The byte-swapping code (for X protocol only) is complete and tested, and heterogeneous sessions are fully supported. Multi-screen support has been dropped. Xmx now always presents a single screen to applications. This also means that, on multi-screen machines, you can tell xmx which screen to use. Xmx can now run in a window. On either the commandline or via XMC protocol, new virtual root windows can be started within existing windows. This makes it possible to have xmx manage a canvas within an application. There are many, many bug fixes. See ./server/BUGLIST for details. XMCLIB XMClib has been completely redesigned and rewritten. It includes many new features, including expanded X authority management, different levels of permission assignable to XMC clients, a scheme for registering sessions to advertise their existence, and selection sharing (cut'n'paste across sessions). Much of what was crufty is now much less so, and parts of the protocol/library that were unspecified are now fully spelled out. Many of these features are not implemented in the server yet, which is why this is still an alpha release. The doc reflects the new interface, and both xmx and xmtg talk the new protocol. CLIENTS Xmtg is nearly untouched, alas. No new clients, but some are in the works. COPYRIGHT All of this software is now under a more liberal copyright (as is all Brown CS software). Unlike previous versions, xmx may now be freely redistributed without restriction. The copyright more explicitely allows any, even commercial use, but still prohibits anyone from selling it. If you want to sell it, you have to give Brown a cut. THE FUTURE Next release is beta. Also, I recently reread Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and I'm persuaded to be less protective of my code. So I am putting this alpha on my main web site and no longer using the "secret" ftp location. Also, I will make snapshots of all future development available, hopefully on a weekly basis on the web site (http://www.cs.brown.edu/software/xmx/). If you haven't read Eric's paper, see (http://www.ccil.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-paper.html) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Bazik jsb@cs.brown.edu