Re: Question about 4.3.0 release
Re: Question about 4.3.0 release
- Subject: Re: Question about 4.3.0 release
- From: Benjamin Reed <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 08:13:52 -0400
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Tim Cutts wrote:
On Sat, Jun 07, 2003 at 12:48:43PM -0700, Haroon Sheikh wrote:
We have fixed many bugs and added a few features since the v0.3 release
of X11 for Mac OS X. What I cannot comment on is when and how this will
be released. I thank you all for your patience.
... which is fair enough, but I for one will be surprised if X11.app
does not become a bundled part of OS X at some point. Apple seem to be
quite keen to move into the scientific computing market, especially
bioinformatics, and in these markets UNIX and X11 are king. Any UNIX
coming along without [free] X11 support will not be able to penetrate
the market. If Apple play this right, they could make big inroads into
the scientific computing market; most of the other players have nailed
their colours to the Itanium2 mast, which could be a disaster. If Apple
produce a fast 64-bit X serve machine based on an IBM Power4 derivative,
they could really steal things.
The thing that worries me from a developer point of view is an issue of
library compatibility. If Apple's X11 ends up being released
(officially) based on the XFree86 4.2 tree, it's going to be hell to
continue to maintain things like Fink's ability to install both XFree86
and Apple's X11. There are three main issues...
1. threading -- Apple's X11 doesn't support threading, the first
official support for threading in libXt on darwin was in 4.3.0 (well,
and the 4.2.99 snapshots)
2. Xft -- the version changed, so things built against 4.3.0 won't work
on Apple's X11. Also, fontconfig was added in 4.3, so that's another
library that will cause incompatibilities for developers who have moved
on to the latest official xfree86 release
3. libfreetype -- Apple's X11 comes with whatever freetype library came
with 4.2 (2.0.9 I think?), but XFree86 4.3 uses 2.1.3, which introduces
a new symbol FT_New_Face. If you have an application that links against
libfreetype 2.1.3 from fink or darwinports etc., *and* against a library
that linked against x11's libfreetype, you get very strange behavior;
font-rendering just freaks out.
The solutions to 2 and 3 are easy enough, both xft+fontconfig and
freetype can be installed on older x11 releases, but I don't know how 1
would get solved easily. From what I understand if you build against a
threaded X11, you can't go back to a non-threaded.
Since some applications have already started bundling Apple's X11
(despite it being a beta), that means that if someone built against a
future threaded apple 4.2.1 libXt, it wouldn't work on, say, beta3.
I understand that Apple's keeping this under their hat, and I presume
it's because a code freeze is on the way for WWDC. All the more reason
to air our issues despite the inability for any official response as to
what things will look like at the end of the month.
Haroon, I understand you're not allowed to say anything, just wanted to
let you know what my concerns are, and pray that they've already been
solved and you just can't tell us. :)
- --
Benjamin Reed a.k.a. Ranger Rick -- http://ranger.befunk.com/
"You CAN'T clean the toilet, Neil, it'll lose all it's character!"
-- Vyvyan
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