New X Window System distribution.

[Jim Gettys]

Release 2 of the X window system, protocol version 10 is now available from
MIT for the DEC VS100, VS1 and VS2 workstations (Microvax II with QVSS) under
Berkeley Unix (4.2, 4.3) and Ultrix (1.1 and 1.2). The device independent
X and Vs100 implementation will be available on the 4.3BSD tape as user
contributed software. Support for login on the displays will appear in
4.3BSD and Ultrix 1.2.

For those of you not familiar with X, X is a portable network
transparent window system for bitmap displays. Applications can be run
from any machine in a local area network via stream connections
(currently TCP and Unix domain are supported). X is a fully heirarchic
window system intended to be very flexible. Manipulations of existing
windows is done with an external window manager; if you don't like ours,
write your own. Applications include a terminal emulator (~VT102 and
Tek 4010), load monitor, clock, imagen previewer, and several window
managers among other things.

Version 10 of the protocol should allow easier porting of clients programs
and the X server to RISC and similar architectures. The X client programs
have been ported to several non-vax architectures and will interoperate
with a Vax display server. Several other server ports are in progress
elsewhere.

A number of new applications have been completed, bugs fixed, and a menu
library comes with this release. The QVSS implementation is now
complete and very much faster than in the first release.

X is available UNSUPPORTED from MIT for $100 and a copy of a Berkeley 4.2
source license. Requests should be sent to "Xreq...@athena.mit.edu" or
("Xreq...@mit-athena.arpa" if your gateway does not yet understand domains),
or by US snail to:
Project Athena
X Request
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Mass. 02139
Bug reports should be sent to Xb...@athena.mit.edu.

We are most interested in hearing from people porting X to new displays.

j...@athena.mit.edu Jim Gettys