It was a fun and
nostalgic stroll down memory lane, because the X Window System I used in the
early-to-mid 90s was very different from X today. Many of the changes have been
introduced so gradually that it??™s only by looking at old screen dumps that I realize
how far we??™ve come.
1.3
1.3 The Renaissance: New X Versus Old X 5
I have started to think of X development in terms of two eras: Old X (1984??“1996)
and New X (2000??“present). Old X was characterized by the development of the core
protocols, essential extensions, and Xt-based toolkits. New X development was
kicked off by the release of the RENDER extension in 2000, which, along with Xft,
OpenGL, the COMPOSE extension, and non-Xt toolkits (Qt and KDE), is causing
large portions of the core X protocol to fall into disuse. Between these two eras, X
development almost came to a standstill.
Here is a summary of some of the key differences in the technology of the two eras:
Element Old X New X
Fonts Bitmapped fonts and scalable fonts
without anti-aliasing, rendered by
the core font capabilities in the
server.
Scalable fonts with full antialiasing,
managed on the client
side by fontconfig, and displayed
by the Xft library using the RENDER
extension.
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