XLIB Programming Manual, Rel. 5, Third Edition

Preface

About This Manual

This manual describes the X library, the C Language programming interface to Version 11 of the X Window System. The X library, known as Xlib, is the lowest level of programming interface to X. This library enables a programmer to write applications with an advanced user interface based on windows on the screen, with complete network transparency, that will run without changes on many types of workstations and personal computers.

Xlib is powerful enough to write effective applications without additional programming tools and is necessary for certain tasks even in applications written with higher-level “toolkits.”

There are a number of these toolkits for X programming, the most notable being the DEC/MIT toolkit Xt, the Andrew toolkit developed by IBM and Carnegie-Mellon University, and the InterViews toolkit from Stanford. These toolkits are still evolving, and only Xt is currently part of the X standard. Toolkits simplify the process of application writing considerably, providing a number of widgets that implement menus, command buttons, and other common features of the user interface.

This manual does not describe Xt or any other toolkit. That is done in Volumes Four and Five of our X Window System series. Nonetheless, much of the material described in this book is helpful for understanding and using the toolkits, since the toolkits themselves are written using Xlib and allow Xlib code to be intermingled with toolkit code.