Progress [LWN.net]

Progress

Posted Jul 23, 2004 6:07 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065)
Parent article: X at OLS

Finally -- it's like X is being taken out of the freezer and development is
being resumed. I especially like that imake is going away. One thing I
miss from the "old days" is user discussion of low-level details.

For example I think it would be nice if there were a way to clear a window
without clipping by children. Yet XClearArea and XClearWindow can't do it.
And those are the only way to clear a window. Combine that with the
problem that window borders can't be redrawn (there is no way to do it) and
you have a problem.

Similarly, why can't the X headers be taught that the generic pointer is
void * in C (not caddr_t, XPointer, char *, etc.)? Why not make a nicer
interface for Properties since C now does type-based aliasing (hint:
unsigned char is assumed to not alias other types except char... too bad
they didn't use plain "char" which is assumed to alias all other types or a
void * and perform a copy). Why don't they use const on strings they don't
modify?

Why isn't there a decent way to simulate mouse clicks from a client (hint:
you can't predict the correct time value to fill into the struct)? Why
can't more than one application receive keypress and mouse click events?
Why isn't there a way to do passive grabs on all children regardless of
focus. Wouldn't it be nice to have timeouts or a "revoke" key binding to
cancel server grabs so applications can't lock up the server?

Why is mouse accelleration a step function with only two steps? An
extension with an ulimited number of steps or at least a large number
would be nice. The xset utility should be updated to handle it as well.

Sub-pixel pointer tracking would be really nice as would the ability to
track movement of the mouse as a relative offset rather than in screen
coordinates (through a special grab mode or something).

More than two-color cursors exist now but are incredibly poorly documented.
I don't think xsetroot was ever updated to handle XPMs.

Where are discussions like this taking place? Are they open to users?

(Log in to post comments)

Progress

Posted Jul 23, 2004 10:21 UTC (Fri) by ctg (subscriber, #3459) [Link]

I believe it is on the x.org mailling list.

The development side of xorg is hosted at http://freedesktop.org/xorg/

You can find a link from here through the mailman pages. You can look at the archives and subscribe etc.

Progress

Posted Jul 23, 2004 14:21 UTC (Fri) by rjw (guest, #10415) [Link]

And for some unknown reason, the xorg administrators have removed themselves from gmane, based on some insane bias against NNTP-Mail gateways.

Way to reduce your audience, guys!

Progress

Posted Jul 23, 2004 22:27 UTC (Fri) by Tcler (subscriber, #5919) [Link]

Wouldn't it be nice to have timeouts or a "revoke" key binding to cancel server grabs so applications can't lock up the server?

The "revoke" key binding has been in XFree86 since 4.2 (see the AllowDeactivateGrabs and AllowClosedownGrabs options in the XF86Config man page). Starting with XFree86 4.4 (and I believe X.Org too), you can change which keys those functions (and others such as the KillServer function usually bound to Ctrl-Alt-Bkspc) are bound to.

More than two-color cursors exist now but are incredibly poorly documented.

Complain to Keith about that one.

Progress

Posted Jul 30, 2004 15:28 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

Are *those* the questions that explain why CE Software has never ported QuicKeys to X? Or *have* they? I don't know what the native OS/X display manager is...