Skip to Content
XLIB Programming Manual, Rel. 5, Third Edition
book

XLIB Programming Manual, Rel. 5, Third Edition

by Adrian Nye
June 1994
Intermediate to advanced
821 pages
24h 40m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from XLIB Programming Manual, Rel. 5, Third Edition

1.3 X Window System Software Architecture

By now, we have described enough to draw a simple picture of the X Window System architecture (see Figure 1-3).

Clients communicate with the server via Xlib calls

Figure 1-3. Clients communicate with the server via Xlib calls

A display server is a program that runs on each system that supports a graphics display, keyboard, and mouse. The X release from MIT includes sample monochrome and color servers for Sun, DEC, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Apple Macintosh, and many other systems. Commercially developed servers are available for virtually all major workstation vendors. In addition, companies such as Graphics Software Systems, Interactive Systems, and Locus Computing offer server implementations for IBM-compatible PCs. Finally, there are X terminals, which are screens controlled by an X server running in ROM. X terminals are available from companies such as Visual, Network Computing Devices, and GraphOn.

Applications communicate with the server by means of calls to a low-level library of C language routines known as Xlib.[3] Xlib provides functions for connecting to a particular display server, creating windows, drawing graphics, responding to events, and so on. Xlib calls are translated to protocol requests sent via tcp/ip either to the local server or to another server across the network. Some of the many sample applications available on the X release include xterm (a terminal emulator), xcalc (a ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Autotools, 2nd Edition

Autotools, 2nd Edition

John Calcote

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596806187Catalog PageErrata