Talk:X Window System

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	X Window System is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
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Article Milestones Date Process Result January 29, 2005 Peer review Reviewed February 1, 2005 Featured article candidate Promoted Current Status: Featured article

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Archives /March 2006

[edit] Quotes

Is there any reason for no quotes about X server in the article? Like Ken Thompson's

[edit] OpenVMS / DECwindows reference?

Should "Hewlett-Packard's OpenVMS operating system includes a version of X with CDE, known as DECwindows, as its standard desktop environment" be reworded? Since HP also ships HP-UX (which presumably also has X), perhaps both should be mentioned to avoid confusion, as OpenVMS and DECwindows are legacy DEC products. It just seems a little like saying "DaimlerChrysler's Plymouth Road Runner Super Bird," with the difference that HP is, in fact, maintaining and shipping legacy DEC stuff.

Dunno. You can reword if you like, but OpenVMS is a current product. Just a very high-end one. And considerably less dead than HP-UX - David Gerard 12:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Display PostScript did not become Aqua

As seen in the Wikipedia article on Display Postscript (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript), it become Quartz. Aqua is the visual theme in OS X, not the display technology.

Display Postscript was replaced by Quartz. Neither is a window manager. -Ahruman 15:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ununderstable introduction

Is it possible to begin this article with a sentence using the verb 'to be' so that it can answer the question that everybody wonders:

"What is X Window System ?"

So, I think the article should begin this way:

In computing, the X Window System (commonly X11 or X) is...

and it's up to you to continue... 16@r 22:35, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried just now and couldn't come up with anything. It is both a dessert wax and a floor topping, or a protocol for constructing such, or toolkits for such - David Gerard 12:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] criticisms section and factual inaccuracies/omissions

Many current implementations of X manipulate the video hardware directly. A misbehaving server can render the display unusable even if the underlying operating system continues to function, possibly requiring a reboot.

So what? A misbehaving driver can lock up any graphical system on any OS. I don't see why this criticism is specific to X at all.

The X protocol provides no facilities for handling sound, leaving it to the operating system to provide support for audio hardware and sound playback.

I thought MAS was part of the official standard now. Granted, nobody uses it...

The device-independence and the separation of client and server do incur an overhead.

All decent graphics APIs are device independent, from Win32 GDI to Quartz to DirectX to OpenGL. That's kind of the point of the API. To provide device independence.

Also, both Windows and Mac OS X operate on the same "separation of client and server" principle also. All modern GUIs do their actual output and GUI apps in separate processes. If every GUI app had direct access to the hardware (as this criticism seems to suggest) it would be a mess!

Also, when you are running programs locally, X will use MIT-SHM and zero-copy sockets, which greatly reduces the affect of this separation.

I just think that many of these criticisms seem to have been put in by uninformed users. – Andyluciano 15:12, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I see that this last point has in fact been given treatment in the article. It needs to be clearer though. I have started editing the section, trying to be careful to do so in a neutral way. – Andyluciano 15:23, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The criticisms are actual problems that are or were commonly touted. I wrote that para most carefully. I suppose there could theoretically be cites for each ... The device independence one was actually unusual in the late '80s and is addressed about as well as it could be in that paragraph. MAS may be the 'standard', but there is no accepted sound transport standard that people actually use - David Gerard 10:19, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

And I'm somewhat surprised you didn't look up the two sources of criticisms listed at the top of the section! A lot of the criticisms are old and outmoded, but still common - David Gerard 10:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is this article about?

A toolkit? A protocol? An implementation? A GUI?

No, yes, a fair bit, not quite - David Gerard 12:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Intro rewritten as "[thing] is ..." - if that isn't clear, add wikilinks to taste - David Gerard 10:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I imagine over 90% of the world's computer-using population has never heard of the X Window System, so it's no wonder people are confused what this article is about. JIP | Talk 08:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

To restore the honor of anonymous poster world-wide: I was not confused, but merely pointing out the inconsistency. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.235.209.158 (talk) 21:47, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Application Migration

The article asserts that applications cannot migrate. This is not in fact true. An early counter example is Gnu Emacs, which has been about to do so since the 1980's (along with replicated display). This was painful in the past due to colormaps (though if you thought ahead while building a toolkit, it wasn't difficult). It is now much easier, between client side fonts and true color displays being the norm.

A more recent example is that GTK+ applications can potentially migrate, at least if they do not use obsolete interfaces. See the "teleport" application of the GPE environment. What is still missing is both good integrated authentication and security (encryption) of the protocol to make migration "safe" to do. I'd like to see people pursue this: see my paper http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2005/view_abstract.php?content_key=102 And with the rewrite of the input section of the X Server, remoting input devices is also now becoming feasible. Oh, this paper should probably get added to the bibliography.

As I am Jim Gettys 23:57, 01-Jan-2007 (UTC), I leave it to others to verify this and edit the article.

I tried to rephrase the Network section to reflect this, and used your paper as a source. Demian12358 22:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] On Portal:Free software, X Window System is currently the selected article

(2007-02-04) Just to let you know. The purpose of selecting an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain on the portal for a week or so. The previous selected article was GIMP. Gronky 20:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The selected article box has been updated again, the new selectee is FOSDEM. Gronky 12:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)