> On Oct 23, 2018, at 11:12 AM, Jim Manley <jim.man...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 3:59 PM Guy Sotomayor Jr <g...@shiresoft.com > <mailto:g...@shiresoft.com>> wrote: > An (optional) X server (and clients) can be added to the OS (I use them all > the time) but > is not part of the base install ... > > Wrong. Apple has been using self-customized, optimized-for their-hardware > supersets of the VNC protocol (which is X based) for Screen Sharing since > early versions of OS X, if not from the beginning, and It's (still) In There > (per Prego spaghetti sauce ads) in the latest versions of OS X. I do have > some first-gen PowerPC systems that I need to see if they power up (ironic > name, PowerPC!), let alone boot, and then I'll have to find original OS X > boot media ... some of us have actual lives, though, so don't hold your > breath!
That’s distinct from the X server and apps that are available as a separate download (and I believe that now they point to Xorg). > > BTW, the X server on OS X, interfaces not to the bit-map but instead to the > native OS X display rendering framework. > > That's not possible, at least when communicating cross-platform, where > bitmaps are the only representation. Projects such as Wayland and Weston are > attempting to provide a modern alternative to X that fully supports vector > representations (using GPU hardware acceleration), through a protocol and > supporting library for a compositing window manager (Wayland) and a > compositor reference implementation (Weston). XWayland implements a > compatibility layer to seamlessly run legacy X11 applications on Wayland. A > few years ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation was funding this effort, in part, > but it was too soon then, and I don't know what the statuses of the projects > are, at this point, although instructions for building the software for Linux > are Out There. Support for Retina and HiDPI displays is mentioned, but I > didn't see anything explicitly about OS X or Windows support in a cursory > scan of the associated wikis - I assume they're talking about running > Wayland/Weston on Linux using Apple and PC hardware. GNOME and KDE are fully > supported, since that's where development started. *sigh* Yes, it is. Just as there exist X implementations that use the GPU to accelerate rendering. It says *nothing* about the cross platform protocol. It’s how the X server communicates with the rendering hardware or in OS X’s case the software interface to do the rendering. As far as OS X is concerned, X is just another OS X application that wants to render to the screen. I use it all the time and it works well along side the normal OS X applications which wouldn’t be possible if the X server wrote directly to the HW. TTFN - Guy
