LPC: 25 years of X [LWN.net]

LPC: 25 years of X

Posted Sep 27, 2009 22:38 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
Parent article: LPC: 25 years of X

I think the DGA code was broken pretty much forever. It depended on
mmap()ing something in the server and handing the pointer to the client!
That could never ever have worked, and as it's a designed-in feature I
can't see how it could have been added at a later date.

As long as DGA works to flip to fullscreen I don't think anyone will miss
it. (And as for PEX, EWWWWW. Nice idea, appalling implementation. I
cheered when that was dropped.)

(But some useful features *have* been dropped. AllowDeactivateGrabs in
particular was a lifesaver on more than one occasion. I emphasise 'was'.
Just last week I had to kill X when a wild grab stole it from me...)

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LPC: 25 years of X

Posted Sep 30, 2009 19:30 UTC (Wed) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link] (2 responses)

Yeah, sorry about AllowDeactivateGrabs. It was broken, so we ripped it out as the first step along the way to actually doing it properly. It will be back. :)

LPC: 25 years of X

Posted Oct 1, 2009 9:54 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Ah, great. The mailing list thread I read had people saying things more like "it is broken and there's no way to do it properly because it can sometimes cause crashes and inconsistent X server state, go away", which I thought rather peculiar because if a grab has gone wild and can't be broken the user is going to be shooting down the whole X server soon, inconsistent state or no.

But if it *is* possible to do it properly and it's coming back, excellent!

LPC: 25 years of X

Posted Oct 2, 2009 21:10 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oops. I forgot the procedure for complaining about changes in xorg.conf
option semantics.

The right thing to do would have been to explode into conspiracy theories
in interminable threads on the xorg list about how the REAL problem with
AllowDeactivateGrabs was that a CONSPIRACY of EMACS users such as all the
X developers (ignoring the majority who use vi or edlin) had INTENTIONALLY
removed this feature with MALICE AFORETHOUGHT, knowing that the feature is
CRITICALLY useful when one is running dozens of VIRTUAL MACHINES under a
closed-source VM management tool on one's embedded TOASTER.

I'll try to remember this in future.