DOC *XBIBLIOGRAPHY Jonathan Meyer, Aug 1991 Updated: Adrian Howard, Sep 1992 Introduction This file contains a reasonable technical bibliography on the X Window System. It was compiled by Ken Lee and made available on newsnet. It is provided "as-is" as a useful source for programmers and users of the POPLOG/X interface. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is my latest bibliography of good, publically available X Window System technical material. There may be other good papers in unpublished conference proceedings and tutorial notes, but these are difficult to find, so I am not listing them here. There's alot of other stuff out there, but I think these are the best references. If you know of any other good ones, please let me know. There are two journals dedicated to material on X. As they should be pretty well indexed, the bibliography will only include selected papers. These journals are *The X Journal* (1097 Eastbrook Rd., Martinsville, N.J. 08836; phone +1-908-563-9033) and *The X Resource: A Practical Journal of the X Window System* (O'Reilly & Associates, 103 Morris St., Sebastapol, CA 95472; phone +1-707-829-0515). The MIT X Consortium hold an annual conference including paper presentations. The proceedings from the 6th conference (January, 1992) are included in Winter issue of *The X Resource* (see above). Papers from earlier conferences were distributed to attendees only and not formally published. Many people have been asking questions about the bibliography. No, I'm not distributing it in any other format. If your printer can't handle the UNIX- style underlining, run it through the UNIX col filter or the equivalent on your system. The sample code from most of the books listed here is available on- line, usually by anonymous ftp to export.lcs.mit.edu, uunet.uu.net, or decwrl.dec.com. Yes, I do accept (and appreciate) review copies of material. Yes, you may put copies of this in your books (see the permission notice below), but please let me know and include the date and contact info from the header. Approximately one a month, updates to this bibliography will be distributed through the comp.windows.x USENET group, the xpert Internet mailing list, and anonymous FTP: export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/Xbibliography and gatekeeper.dec.com:/pub/X11/contrib/Xbibliography Due to popular demand, I am also preparing a PostScript version. This is available only by anonymous FTP: export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/Xbibliography.ps gatekeeper.dec.com:/pub/X11/contrib/Xbibliography.ps Please do not ask for updates other than these. Sorry, I am not able to distribute copies of the material mentioned here. Your librarian or bookstore should be able to help you. Ken ================================ cut here ================================ X TECHNICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY please send updates to: Ken Lee, DEC WSL, 335 Bryant St., Palo Alto, CA 94301 Internet: klee@pa.dec.com, UUCP: uunet!decwrl!klee September 3, 1992 Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992 by Digital Equipment Corpora- tion, Maynard, Massachusetts. Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this documen- tation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that both the above copyright notice and this per- mission notice appear in all copies, and that the name of Di- gital Equipment Corporation not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this documentation without specific, written prior permission. Angebranndt, Susan and et al, "Integrating Audio and Telephony in a Distri- buted Workstation Environment," in Proceedings of the Summer, 1991 USENIX Conference, pp. 419-435. Describes a client-server audio toolkit whose architecture is very similar to that of the X Window System. Angebranndt, Susan, Raymond Drewry, Philip Karlton, Todd Newman, Bob Scheifler, and Keith Packard, Definition of the Porting Layer for the X v11 Sample Server, 1988-1991. A detailed reference to the modules of the sample server. This is a companion to "Strategies for Porting the X v11 Sample Server" by the same authors. Both are included in the MIT X11R5 distribution (X11R5/mit/doc/Server). Angebranndt, Susan, Raymond Drewry, Philip Karlton, Todd Newman, Bob Scheifler, and Keith Packard, Strategies for Porting the X v11 Sample Server, 1988-1991. A guide to strategies for porting the sample server. This is a companion to "Definition of the Porting Layer for the X v11 Sample Server" by the same authors. Both are included in the MIT X11R5 distribution (X11R5/mit/doc/Server). Angebranndt, Susan, Phil Karlton, Raymond Drewry, and Todd Newman, "Writing Tailorable Software: The X11 Sample Server," Software Practice and Ex- perience, vol. 20, no. S2, October, 1990. Portability was a major goal for the X11 sample server. This article discusses design and im- plementation issues that helped achieve portability. Angebranndt, Susan and Todd Newman, "The Sample X11 Server Architecture," Digital Technical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 16-23, Summer, 1990. An overview of the sample server, including goals, problem areas, modules, and porting guidelines. Asente, Paul, "Simplicity and Productivity," UNIX Review, vol. 6, no. 9, pp. 57-63. A discussion on the classing mechanism in the X Toolkit. Asente, Paul J. and Ralph R. Swick, X Window System Toolkit, Digital Press, 1990. ISBN 1-55558-051-3. The X Toolkit bible, a companion to Sheifler & Gettys book on Xlib and the X protocol. It includes both a - 2 - tutorial on programming with the X Toolkit and a formal specification of the toolkit. The tutorial, which covers both using and writing widgets, is comprehensive and excellent. The specification is an enhancement of the MIT Xt intrinsics manual, by the same authors. Baldwin, Howard, "What Gives An X Terminal X Appeal?," UNIX World, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 89-94, May, 1991. A look at the popular features of X ter- minals. Barkakati, Nabajyoti, X Window System Programming, SAMS, 1991. ISBN 0- 672-22750-9. Another tutorial on X programming. The Xlib section is not as good as Jones' book. There's a short section at the end on mix- ing Xlib with the X Toolkit, but the programming style used there is poor. Barkakati, Nabajyoti, UNIX Desktop Guide to X/MOTIF, Hayden Books, 1992. ISBN 0-672-22836. Not yet reviewed. Bartlett, Joel F., "Don't Fidget with Widgets, Draw!," DEC Western Research Laboratory Research Report 91/6, May, 1991. Describes EZD, a high- level graphics server that simplifies the development of interactive graphical user interfaces. EZD is based on X. For information on ob- taining free copies of this report, send electronic mail to ``wrl- techreports@decwrl.dec.com''. Your message should contain the single word ``help''. Bass, Len, Erik Hardy, Reed Little, and Robert Seacord, "Serpent Overview," CMU/SEI-89-UG-2, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.. An overview and tutorial of the Serpent User Interface Management System. Serpent is a UIMS implemented on top of several X toolkits. This paper, as well as the Serpent source code, is included in the MIT X11R4 distribution. Bass, Len and et al, "Serpent: A User Interface Management System," in Proceedings of the Winter, 1990 USENIX Conference, pp. 245-258. An introduction to the Serpent UIMS from Carnegie Mellon University. Berlage, Thomas, OSF/Motif: Concepts and Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1991. ISBN 0-201-55792-4. A good tutorial on Motif programming. It doesn't include lots of toy examples like some of the other books, but there are good practical examples and the descriptions of the widget func- tionality (especially the constraint widgets) are excellent. The sec- tion on subclassing Motif (mostly XmPrimitive) widget classes is not real complete, but still is far better than those in other Motif books. There is an introductory section on UIL, which is easier to understand, though not as complete as the section in the Motif programmer's guide. This book does not contain a tutorial on the X Toolkit intrinsics, so you will probably want Asente & Swick's book for that. Blewett, Doug, "X Widget Based Software Tools for UNIX," in Proceedings of the Winter, 1992 USENIX Conference, pp. 111-123. Describes small language and IPC protocol for creating small X-based software utili- ties and filters. - 3 - Borenstein, Nathaniel S., Multimedia Applications Development with the An- drew Toolkit, Prentice Hall, 1990. ISBN 0-13-036633-1. A tutorial and reference manual for the Andrew toolkit. Andrew is an applications toolkit implemented on several window systems, including X. It is in- cluded in the MIT X11R4 distribution. Bourne, Philip E. and Lawrence S. Shapiro, "Developing with DECwindows," DEC Professional, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 36-44, February, 1990. A description of DECwindows programming, focusing on the User Interface Language (UIL). UIL is used by both DECwindows and OSF/Motif. Braca, Mike, "X Display Management," UNIX World, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 107- 112, April, 1991. An introduction to the X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP). Braca, Mike, "Configuring X Display Management," UNIX World, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 113-123, May, 1991. A guide to using the ``xdm'' client. Brain, Marshall, Motif Programming: The Essentials ..., Digital Press, 1992. ISBN 0-13-489378-6 A tutorial on Motif programming. I haven't read it yet, but others have given it mixed reviews. Brunhoff, Todd, "Pleasing The Eye," UNIX Review, vol. 7, no. 10, pp. 64-72. An introduction to VEX, a proposed (and since withdrawn) video exten- sions to X. Burgard, Mike, "Serving Up X From a PC," UNIX World, vol. 8, no. 11, pp. 99-108, November, 1991. A review of three products that allow you to run X under Microsoft Windows on IBM PCs. Calder, Paul R. and Mark Linton, "Glyphs: Flyweight Objects for User In- terfaces," in Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on User Inter- face Software and Technology, October, 1990. Some new user interface objects for InterViews, a C++ based toolkit for X. Champine, George, Bob Scheifler, Jim Gettys, Georges Grinstein, and Bertram Herzog, "Panel discussion on the X Window System," in SIGGRAPH'88 Panel Proceedings, August, 1988. This is the transcript of an in- teresting panel discussion on X. George Champine was moderator. Panel- ists were Bob Scheifler, Jim Gettys, Georges Grinstein, and Bertram Herzog. The panelists discussed the history of X and current work at/on the X Consortium, PEX, and national and international standards for X. This was followed by a lively question and answer session on the present and future of X. Champine, George, MIT Project Athena: A Model for Distributed Campus Com- puting, Digital Press, 1991. A review of Project Athena, which gen- erated lots of fun toys, including the X Window System. Clifford, William, John McConnell, and Jeffrey Friedberg, "The Development of PEX, A Three-dimensional Graphics Extension to X11," in Proceedings of Eurographics'88, September, 1988. An overview PEX, an extension to the X protocol to support PHIGS+. - 4 - Dardailler, D., "Tips for Writing Motif-based Graphical Applications," in Xhibition'92 Conference Proceedings, pp. 207-216. Some Motif program- ming hints, mostly for the drawing area and scrolled window widgets. Dolan, Michael A. and Larry Hare, "X Window System Servers in Embedded Sys- tems," in Proceedings of COMPCON Spring 1990, pp. 314-319, February, 1990. A discussion of X server architectures for embedded systems, such as accelerator boards and stand-alone terminals. Droms, Ralph and Wayne Dyksen, "Performance Measurements of the X Window System Protocol," Software Practice and Experience, vol. 20, no. S2, October, 1990 A analysis of the performance of the X protocol over TCP/IP networks.. Epstein, Jeremy and Marvin Shugerman, "A Trusted X Window System Server for Trusted Mach," in Proceedings of the First USENIX Mach Workshop, Oc- tober, 1990. Describes the prototype of a B3-level Trusted X. Flowers, Ken, "Using Motif's User Interface Language," UNIX World, vol. 7, no. 12, pp. 119-131, December, 1990. A basic tutorial the Motif User Interface Language (UIL). UIL is a meta-language for specifying Motif widget resources and hierarchies. It allows much of a program's user interface to be developed independently of the rest of the program's functionality. Flowers, Ken, "Programming with the Motif Toolkit," UNIX World, vol. 7, no. 11, pp. 135-144, November, 1990. A basic tutorial on X Toolkit pro- gramming using the Motif widget set. The article focuses on the vari- ous Motif widgets, assuming that the reader understands the basics of using the X Toolkit. Gajewska, Hania, Mark Manasse, and Joel McCormack, "Why X is Not Our Ideal Window System," Software Practice and Experience, vol. 20, no. S2, Oc- tober, 1990. Some comments on problems with the design of the X Win- dow System. Gaskins, Tom, PHIGS Programming Manual: 3D Programming in X, O'Reilly & As- sociates, 1992. ISBN 0-937175-85-4 (soft), 0-937175-92-7 (hard). The only PHIGS book written specifically for PEX-based implementations. Gettys, Jim, "Problems Implementing Window Systems in UNIX," in Proceedings of the Winter, 1986 USENIX Conference, pp. 89-97. Describes some of the early work on X, especially technical issues in implementing server-based window systems on UNIX systems. Gettys, Jim, "Network Windowing using the X Window System," Dr. Dobb's Journal, pp. 42-53, March, 1989. A discussion on the importance of networking for window systems. Gettys, Jim, Phil Karlton, and Scott McGregor, "The X Window System, Ver- sion 11," Software Practice and Experience, vol. 20, no. S2, October, 1990. A technical overview of the X11 functionality. This is an up- date of the X10 TOG paper by Scheifler & Gettys. - 5 - Good, Michael, "User Interface Consistency in the DECwindows Program," in Proceedings of the Human Factors Society, Vol. 1, 1988. A discussion of user interface design techniques used in developing the DECwindows toolkit. Greenwood, Stephen, "The DECwindows User Interface Language," Digital Technical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 34-43, Summer, 1990. An over- view of the DECwindows user interface language (UIL). UIL allows pro- grammers to specify and configure the X Toolkit widget hierarchy at run-time. This is very useful for rapid prototyping and international- ization. UIL is used by both DECwindows and Motif. Gregory, K. D., Programming withMotif, O'Reilly & Associates, 1992. ISBN 0-387-97877-1. A basic tutorial on using Motif widgets. Not yet re- viewed. Hayes, Frank, "X Terminals vs. Diskless Workstations," UNIX World, vol. 7, no. 10, pp. 83-86, October, 1990. A look at some of the tradeoffs between using X terminals and diskless workstations. Heller, Dan, "The XView Toolkit (2 parts)," UNIX World, vol. 7, no. 6-7, June-July, 1990. A two part tutorial on XView, based on Volume 7 of the O'Reilly series. XView, from Sun, is a user interface toolkit for X. It is similar to, but not compatible with (at either the end-user or the programmer levels), MIT's X Toolkit. It supports Open Look, but not Motif. Heller, Dan, "Handling UNIX Signals in X Applications," The X Journal, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 17-22, March, 1991. A tutorial on safely using UNIX signals within X clients. This article has been somewhat controver- sial. See the letters to the editor in the next issue of this maga- zine before trying any of these techniques. Hesketh, Richard, "Perly --- UNIX with Buttons," Software Practice and Ex- perience, vol. 21, no. 11, November, 1991. Another buttons toolkit for UNIX and X. See also the Robertson paper. Holzgang, David A., Display PostScript Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1990. ISBN 0-201-51814-7. A tutorial on Display PostScript. Many commercial X implementations include DPS as an extension to the core X protocol. DPS can be used in conjunction with or instead of the core X graphics requests. Hopgood, F. R. A., Methodology of Window Management, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1986. ISBN 0-387-16116-3. The proceedings of the important 1985 Alvey Workshop on Window Management. It includes interesting ma- terial on problems with UNIX window systems and proposed solutions. It also includes descriptions of early versions of current UNIX window systems, such as X and Sun's NeWS. Israel, Elias and Erik Fortune, The X Window System Server, Digital Press, 1993. To be published in Sept., 1992. A technical reference on the internals of the X11R5 sample server, including the core architecture, porting and tuning techniques, and extension techniques. Not yet re- - 6 - viewed. Johnson, Eric and Kevin Reichard, Advanced X Window Applications Program- ming, MIS: Press, 1990. ISBN 1-55828-016-2. An "advanced" version of the authors' previous book. Johnson, Eric and Kevin Reichard, Power Programming with Motif, MIS: Press, 1991. ISBN 1-55828-059-6. Another tutorial on Motif application pro- gramming. It does not cover subclassing widgets or using the UIL in- terface. Coverage is generally poorer than similar books, especially Berlage's book. Johnson, Eric and Kevin Reichard, X Window Applications Programming, second edition, MIS: Press, 1992. ISBN 1-55828-178-9. The first edition of this book had several significant flaws. The second edition is sup- posedly improved, but has not yet been reviewed. Jones, Oliver, Introduction to the X Window System, Prentice-Hall, 1989. ISBN 0-13-499997-5. An excellent introduction to programming with Xlib. Written with the serious programmer in mind, this book includes many practical tips that are not found anywhere else. While the others simply regurgitate that material in the MIT manuals, this book ex- plains key Xlib concepts much more clearly and gives examples of using X to solve real world problems. The seventh printing is updated to X11R4. Kataoka, Yutaka and et al, "A Model for Input and Output of Multilingual Text in a Windowing Environment," in Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 175-183, No- vember, 1991. Keller, Brian J., A Practical Guide to X Window Programming, CRC Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8493-7406-5. Another tutorial on X application writing. This one claims to use the X Toolkit and Motif, though the Motif ma- terial is not very good. Kent, Christopher, "XDPS: A Display PostScript System Extension for DECwindows," Digital Technical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 64-73, Sum- mer, 1990. An overview of Display PostScript, an extension to the X protocol allowing PostScript graphics in X windows. Kimball, Paul, The X Toolkit Cookbook, Prentice-Hall, 1991. Not yet re- viewed. Reportedly a practical guide to X Toolkit programming, includ- ing use of the Motif, Open Look, and Athena widget sets. Kobara, Shiz, Visual Design With OSF/Motif, Addison-Wesley, 1991. ISBN 0- 201-56320-7. A guide to using Motif to create visually appealing and consistent user interfaces, by one of the user interface designers who helped create the Motif look. Labs, UNIX System, Open Look Release 4 Graphical User Interface: Programmer's Guide, Prentice-Hall, 1991. A programmer's guide for the Open Look Intrinsics Toolkit (OLIT). OLIT is a widget set for the X Toolkit intrinsics. OLIT is not compatible with XView. - 7 - LaStrange, Tom E., "swm: An X Window Manager Shell," in Proceedings of the Summer, 1990 USENIX Conference, pp. 299-306. Describes the swm window manager, supporting a configurable user interface and a virtual root window. Lee, Kenton, "Behind Curtain X," UNIX Review, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 22-28, June, 1991. Despite the title, this article really describes (most of) the most common X programming errors and ways to avoid them. Lee, Kenton, "Twenty Quesions with Paul Asente," The X Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 12-17, November, 1991. An interview with one of the X Toolkit's designers. He discusses its history and his vision for its future. Lee, Kenton, "Multimedia and the X Toolkit," The X Journal, vol. 1, no. 6, July, 1992. A discussion on X Toolkit based tools for the development of integrated multimedia (audio, video, and graphics) applications. Lee, Kenton, "Graphics Effects by X Colormap Manipulation," The X Journal, vol. 1, no. 5, May, 1992. Most X applications generate graphics through X raster drawing functions. This paper discusses some powerful techniques for generating graphics by manipulating the colormap in ad- dition to or in place of raster drawing. Detailed examples include overlay planes and double buffer animation. Leffler, Samuel J., "A Window On The Future?," UNIX Review, vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 62-69. This article compares Sun's NeWS with other window sys- tems, such as X, and concludes that, despite its problems, NeWS is the window system of the future. See Robin Schaufler's paper for a more technical comparison of the X and NeWS. Lemke, David and David S. H. Rosenthal, "Visualizing X11 Clients," in Proceedings of the Summer, 1988 USENIX Conference, pp. 125-138. A tu- torial on ``visuals'', the X abstraction of display hardware capabili- ties. Proper use of visuals is necessary for an X client to work with and take advantage of a variety of different display devices. An up- dated version is included in the MIT X11R5 distribution (X11R5/mit/doc/tutorials/visuals). Levitt, Jason, "Spotlight on Serial X Terminals," UNIX Today, pp. 46-52, May 13, 1991. A review of some X terminals that support serial proto- cols. This type of terminal can be used with a modem over a telephone line. Levitt, Jason, "Windows, X Servers Collide," Open Systems Today, March 2, 1992. A comparison of the functionality and performance of six X servers for PCs running Microsoft Windows. Linton, Mark and Paul Calder, "The Design and Implementation of Inter- Views," in Proceedings of the 1987 USENIX C++ Workshop, 1987. Describes the InterViews user interface toolkit, written in C++ and based on the X Window System. Even if you don't plan to use Inter- Views as a toolkit, it provides a good C++ binding to the X protocol. - 8 - Linton, Mark A., John M. Vlissides, and Paul R. Calder, "Composing User In- terfaces with InterViews," IEEE Computer, vol. 22, no. 8, pp. 8-22, February, 1989. Describes the InterViews user interface toolkit, written in C++ and based on the X Window System. Mansfield, Niall, The X Window System: A User's Guide, Addison-Wesley, Am- sterdam A tutorial on X for end-users, not programmers. The second edition is based on X11R4., 1991. Mayer, Niels P., "The WINTERP Widget INTERpreter," LISP Pointers, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 45-60, July, 1990. Discusses WINTERP, a Lisp prototyping environment for Motif applications. McCormack, Joel and Paul Asente, "Using the X Toolkit or How to Write a Widget," in Proceedings of the Summer, 1988 USENIX Conference, pp. 1- 13. An excellent tutorial on writing basic X Toolkit widgets. Poten- tial widget writers (and maybe users, too) should probably start by reading this paper. Unfortunately, it's based on X11R2, so some of it is out of date. McCormack, Joel and Paul Asente, "An Overview of the X Toolkit," in Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on User Interface Software, pp. 46-55, October, 1988. An excellent architectural overview of the X Toolkit, including its goals, how it accomplished them, and possible future directions. McCormack, Joel, "Writing Fast X Servers for Dumb Color Frame Buffers," DEC Western Research Laboratory Research Report 91/1, February, 1991. Describes the implementation of one of the best X servers currently available, that of the color DECstation 3100. Algorithms as well as performance measurements are discussed. For information on obtaining free copies of this report, send electronic mail to ``wrl- techreports@decwrl.dec.com''. Your message should contain the single word ``help''. Note that this paper supersedes DECWRL TN-9. This paper also appears in the Software Practice and Experience Volume 20, Spe- cial Issue S2. McGregor, Scott, "An Overview of the DECwindows Architecture," Digital Technical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 9-15, Summer, 1990. An overview of DECwindows, a superset of X for DEC workstations. McLoughlin, Lee, "A Simple Guide to Porting the X Window System," in Proceedings of EUUG Spring 1989, pp. 283-291, Brussels, April 3-7, 1989. A brief, but good, discussion of the interface between the X server and the underlying operating system. The EUUG conference is sponsored by the European Unix Users' Group. McMinds, Donald L., Mastering OSF/Motif Widgets, Addison-Wesley, 1991, 1991. ISBN 0-201-56342-8. A tutorial on using existing Motif widgets. Lots of examples, but, unfortunately, they are not very detailed and many common problem areas are not discussed. McNutt, Dinah, "Administering X Sites," UNIX Review, vol. 10, no. 7, pp. 45-48, July, 1992. A review of some X configuration and administra- - 9 - tion issues. Mehta, Sunil, "User Interfaces and the IEEE P1201 Committee," UNIX Review, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 14-20. A review of the activities of the IEEE P1201 standards committee, by its chairman. P1201 is trying to develop international standards for the X Window System client side (Xlib and above). Lower levels of X (servers and protocol) are being standard- ized by ANSI Task Group X3H3.6. Mikes, Steve, "Fast Track To Motif Applications," UNIX World, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 101-106, March, 1991. This article reviews a couple of pro- ducts that help programmers to quickly port dumb terminal applications to X and Motif. Some would call this approach a hack, but it is easy and does provide some functionality beyond dumb terminal emulators. Mikes, Steven, X Window System Technical Reference, Addison-Wesley, 1990. ISBN 0-201-52370-1. A quick reference manual for X11R3, including Xlib, Xt, fonts, bitmaps, keysyms, Motif, and OPEN LOOK. Mikes, Steven, "New Ways to Program in Object-Oriented X," UNIX World, vol. 8, no. 8, pp. 103-108, August, 1991. Reviews the Saber and Solbourne object-oriented user interface toolkits. Both are based on C++ and support X. Mikes, Steven, X Window System Program Design and Development, Addison- Wesley, 1992. ISBN 0-201-55077-6. Not yet reviewed. Miller, John David, An OPEN LOOK at UNIX: A Developer's Guide to X, M&T Books, 1990. ISBN 1-55-851057-5. A tutorial on the Open Look widget set from AT&T. Contact M&T Books at 1-800-533-4372. Mirchandani, Dinesh and Prabuddha Biswas, "Ethernet Performance of Remote DECwindows Applications," Digital Technical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 84-94, Summer, 1990. Describes a methodology for analyzing the performance of networked X applications. Morisaki, Masato and et al, "XJp System: An Internationalized Language In- terface for the X Window System," in Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 185-193, No- vember, 1991. An overview of the XJp system, a multi-byte input sys- tem for X. Multi-byte input is especially important for Asian charac- ter sets, such as Kanji. Myers, Brad A., "Window Interfaces: A Taxonomy of Window Manager User In- terfaces," IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 65-84, September, 1988. A taxonomy of current window system user in- terfaces, including the UWM window manager for X. Discusses and com- pares the features of each user interface. Contrast this with Rob Pike's window system user interface guidelines. Myers is a well known user interface researcher. Nadeau, David R., "High-Performance 3-D Graphics In A Window Environment," Computer Technology Review, pp. 89-93, Fall, 1988. A discussion on integrating Megatek's high-performance 3D graphics hardware/software - 10 - with X. Nye, Adrian, "The X Window System Protocol," UNIX World, vol. 6, no. 9, pp. 105-113, September, 1989. An introduction to the X protocol. This is a short version of Nye's introduction to Volume 0 of O'Reilly's X series. O'Reilly and Associates, Definitive Guides to the X Window System, O'Reilly and Associates, 1988-1992. There are three main types of books in this series: "programmers manuals" (tutorials for programmers), "reference manuals" (man pages, similar to the MIT manuals) and "user guides" (tutorials for non-programmers). The volumes in this series are: Vol. 0: X Protocol Reference Manual, Vol. 1: Xlib Programming Manual, Vol. 2: Xlib Reference Manual, Vol. 3: X Window System User's Guide, Vol. 3M: X Window System User's Guide (Motif Edition), Vol. 4: X Toolkit Intrinsics Programmers Manual, Vol. 4M: X Toolkit Intrinsics Programmers Manual (Motif Edition), Vol. 5: X Toolkit In- trinsics Reference Manual, Vol. 6: Motif Programming Manual, Vol. 7: XView Programming Manual, Vol. 7 Companion: XView Reference Manual, and Vol. R5 Update: Programmer's Supplement for X11R5. Some people like these because of their broad coverage; most interfaces are covered, usually with examples. Others dislike them because coverage of complex subjects is often superficial and inferior to that in com- peting books. Also, some of the material is biased, for example the Motif book does not cover the user interface language because the au- thor of the book did not agree with the philosophy of UIL. The most recent versions of these books are based on X11R4 or X11R5. O'Reilly and Associates, The X Window System in a Nutshell, O'Reilly and Associates, 1992. ISBN ISBN 1-56592-017-1. A quick reference guide to Xlib and Xt and some associated configuration files. It leaves out a lot of material in order to achieve a small, convenient size. The second edition, based on X11R5, is much improved over the first edi- tion. Open Software Foundation, OSF/Motif Series (5 volumes), Prentice Hall, 1990. Motif is a popular user interface programming environment for X. It was designed and developed by members of the Open Software Foun- dation, including DEC, HP, and IBM. These companies have committed to using Motif as their standard user interface. These volumes include Motif Style Guide, Programmer's Guide, Programmer's Reference, User's Guide, and Application Environment Specification (AES) User Environ- ment Volume. There are two editions of these books, one for release 1.0 and one for release 1.1. Motif 1.1 is based on X11R4. Ousterhout, John K., "An X11 Toolkit Based on the Tcl Language," in Proceedings of the Winter, 1991 USENIX Conference, pp. 105-115. Describes a high level toolkit based on the Tcl programming language. Since Tcl is interpreted, this toolkit allows for some interesting run-time dynamics. Unfortunately, it is not compatible with the X Toolkit and popular widget sets. Pausch, Randy and et al, "SUIT: The Pascal of User Interface Toolkits," in Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on User Interface Software - 11 - and Technology, November, 1991. Describes SUIT, a simple user inter- face toolkit. It's primary motivation is to be easy for student pro- grammers to learn. Versions run on X, Macintosh, DOS, and Silicon Graphics window systems. Pedneault, Michel, "A High-Level User Interface Toolkit for the X Window System and Character Terminals," in Proceedings of the Summer, 1990 USENIX Conference, pp. 307-313. Describes the NTUI toolkit, which supports a single programming interface for both graphical (using the X Toolkit) and character user interfaces. Peterson, C. and S. S. Chang, "Improving the Performance of X Applica- tions," in Xhibition'92 Conference Proceedings, pp. 93-100. Some pro- gramming techniques to improve client performance. Pike, Rob, "Window Systems Should Be Transparent," USENIX Computing Sys- tems, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 279-296, Summer, 1988. Some window system user interface guidelines, based on MUX window system for the BLIT terminal, with some comparisons to X. Contrast this to Myers' paper. Pike is the developer of the BLIT. Pike, Rob, "A Concurrent Window System," USENIX Computing Systems, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 133-153, Spring, 1989. A description of a multi-threaded window system written using a concurrent programming language. The design is shown to be simpler than the single threaded design of X. PostScript, The Dos and Don'ts of Display, "Tips for Writing Motif-based Graphical Applications," in Xhibition'92 Conference Proceedings, pp. 247-256. Some Display PostScript hints. Probst, Richard, "OPEN LOOK Toolkits," SunTechnology, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 76-86, Autumn, 1988. OPEN LOOK is a user interface specification designed by AT&T and Sun. This paper discusses toolkits supporting OPEN LOOK including two for the X Window System. Raney, Scott, "Pick a GUI, Any GUI," UNIX World, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 103- 107, May, 1991. A review of the XVT product. XVT claims to provide a single API to generate user interfaces for Motif, Macintosh, Presenta- tion Manager, Open Look, and ASCII terminals. This article says XVT is appropriate for in-house tools, but not for product quality applica- tions. Rao, R. and S. Wallace, "The X Toolkit," in Proceedings of the Summer, 1987 USENIX Conference. Describes an early version of the X Toolkit. Raymond, Darrell R., "Flexible Text Display with Lector," IEEE Computer, vol. 25, no. 8, pp. 49-60, August, 1992. Describes Lector, a flexi- ble, interactive text input/output system for X. Reichard, Kevin and Eric Johnson, "Drop Dead Programming," UNIX Review, vol. 9, no. 11, pp. 111-114, November, 1991. A brief overview of some X debugging techniques. - 12 - Robertson, George G., D. Austin Henderson, Jr., and Stuart K. Card, "But- tons as First Class Objects on an X Desktop," in Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 35-44, November, 1991. An overview of the XButtons toolkit, which im- plements a button-oriented user interface paradigm for X and UNIX. See also the Hesketh paper. Rochkind, Marc J., "XVT: A Virtual Toolkit for Portability Between Window Systems," in Proceedings of the Winter, 1989 USENIX Conference, pp. 151-163. Describes the Extensible Virtual Toolkit (XVT), a user in- terface toolkit that claims to provide a uniform application program- ming interface to several different window systems, while providing the ``look and feel'' appropriate for the window system. Supported window systems include X11, Microsoft Windows, OS/2 Presentation Manager, and the Macintosh. Rosenberg, Jarrett, Paul Asente, Mark Linton, and Andrew Palay, "X Toolk- its: The Lessons Learned," in Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Sympo- sium on User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 108-111, October, 1990. The proceedings include the prepared statements of panelists at a panel discussion. Jarrett Rosenberg was moderator. Paul Asente spoke on the X Toolkit. Mark Linton spoke on InterViews. Andrew Palay spoke on the Andrew Toolkit. Rosenthal, David, Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM), 1988-1991. Interoperability between multiple clients running simul- taneously is a major feature of the X Window System. Several standard conventions are needed to maintain this interoperability. These con- ventions are documented in the ICCCM. Some have said that when experts answer RTFM to X questions, the 'M' is usually the ICCCM. A copy of the latest ICCCM is in the MIT X11R5 distribution (X11R5/mit/doc/ICCCM). Rosenthal, David S. H., "A Simple X11 Client Program," in Proceedings of the Winter, 1988 USENIX Conference, pp. 229-235. A version of the ``hello, world'' paper, presenting and comparing the basics of the X library and the X Toolkit. All potential X programmers (Xlib or X toolkit) should understand everything in this paper before they at- tempt to write any X programs. Included in the MIT X distribution (X11R5/doc/tutorials/HelloWorld) and reprinted as ``Going for Baroque'' in the June or July, 1988 (vol. 6, no. 6) issue of UNIX Re- view magazine. Rosenthal, David S. H. and Adam R. de Boor, Godzilla's Guide to Porting the X V11 Sample Server, 1987, 1990. A hackers guide to quick-and-dirty porting of the sample server to memory-mapped monochrome and color frame buffers. This document is included in the MIT X11R5 distribution (X11R5/mit/doc/Server). Rosenthal, David S. H., "Window Exchange," UNIX Review, vol. 7, no. 12, pp. 58-64, January, 1990. An excellent review of X client interoperabili- ty problems, by the author of the X Inter-Client Communication Conven- tions Manual (ICCCM). About half the paper discusses differences among servers that an application writer must understand. The other half - 13 - discusses (ICCCM) issues such as selections and dealing with the win- dow manager. Rost, Randi, "Adding A Dimension to X," UNIX Review, vol. 6, no. 10, pp. 51-59. An overview of PEX. Rost, Randi, Jeffrey Friedberg, and Peter Nishimoto, "PEX: A Network- Transparent 3D Graphics System," IEEE Computer Graphics & Applica- tions, pp. 14-26, July, 1989. A good overview of PEX, the PHIGS/PHIGS+ 3D extension to X. Rost, Randi J., X and Motif Quick Reference Guide, Digital Press, 1990. ISBN 1-55558-052-1. A quick reference guide to Xlib, the X Toolkit, and Motif. It's a little bulkier than the O'Reilly quick reference, but the cross referencing is much better. Ryan, Michael and James VanGilder, "The Development of DECwindows VMS Mail," Digital Technical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 74-83, Summer, 1990. Describes the engineering and development of a moderate sized X application. Schaufler, Robin, "X11/NeWS Design Overview," in Proceedings of the Summer, 1988 USENIX Conference, pp. 23-35. Discusses Sun's X/NeWS window sys- tem. Compares the functionality of X and NeWS and describes a server that merges the two. Scheifler, Bob, "What's New In Release 5," The X Resource, vol. 0, pp. 7- 15, Fall, 1991. An overview of the new features in X11R5. Scheifler, Robert and Jim Gettys, "The X Window System," ACM Transactions on Graphics, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 79-109, April, 1986. The first pub- lished description of X, describing X10. This paper, along with an up- dated version describing X11, also appears in the Software Practice and Experience Volume 20, Special Issue S2. Scheifler, Robert and James Gettys, X Window System, Third Edition, Digital Press, 1992. ISBN 1-555558-088-2. The Xlib and X protocol bible by the authors of X11. The third edition is a superset of the MIT docu- mentation on X11R5 Xlib, X protocol, XLFD, ICCCM, BDF, and the com- pound text encoding. This is THE specification of the core of X and is required for all serious X programmers, though it may be rough going for those with little experience in interactive computer graphics. See also Asente & Swick's companion book on the X Toolkit. Schmandt, Chris, Mark Ackerman, and Debby Hindus, "Augmenting a Window Sys- tem with Speech Input," IEEE Computer, vol. 23, no. 8, pp. 50-56, Au- gust, 1990. Describes Xspeak, an experimental speech recognition client that allows voice access to X windows. Schmidtmann, Chris, M. Tao, and S. Watt, "Design and Implementation of a Multi-Threaded Xlib," in Xhibition'92 Conference Proceedings, pp. 65- 74. The sample Xlib from MIT is thread safe, but not multi-threaded. This paper describes a true multi-threaded implementation. - 14 - Shein, Barry, "What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?," Sun Expert, vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 44-51, April, 1990. A review of OpenWindows, Sun's pro- duct version of X. Shein, Barry, "Primal Screens," Sun Expert, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 56-69, Janu- ary, 1990. An interesting, though somewhat religious, comparison of X and Sun's NeWS window system. It concludes, "even Scott McNealy has spoken of NeWS as a failure as a standard, although he hastens to add that it was a technological success." Sheldrick, Dennis, "Security and the X Window System ," UNIX World, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 103-110, January, 1992. A tutorial on X access control and authorization. Smith, Jerry D., Object-oriented Programming with the X Window System Toolkits, John Wiley & Sons, 1991. ISBN 0-471-53259-2. A tutorial on X programming, emphasizing object-oriented encapsulation. Smith, Jerry D., Designing X Clients with Xt/Motif, Morgan Kaufmann Pub- lishers, 1992. ISBN 1-55860-255-0. A book on X Toolkit and Motif ap- plication software engineering. Not yet reviewed. Southerton, Alan, Andrew Wolfe, Jr., and David Granz, "DOS and UNIX On a Two-Way Street," UNIX World, vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 48-56, August, 1992. A review of Quarterdeck's Desqview/X and Cayman System's XGator. Desqview/X is a full X environment (server and libraries) for DOS. XGator allows Macintosh applications to display on X servers. They conclude that these are excellent products, though the initial ver- sions do have some quality and performance problems. Spine, Thomas and Jacob VanNoy, "The Evolution of the X User Interface Style," Digital Technical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 44-51, Summer, 1990. Describes the design and evolution of the DECwindows look and feel for the X Window System. Stroyan, Michael, "Three-Dimensional Graphics Using the X Window System," Dr. Dobb's Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 28-36, February, 1990. A high level description of various approaches to developing 3D graphics tools for X, including those of the PHIGS Extension to X (PEX) and HP's Starbase-on-X11 (sox11). Sung, Hsien Ching Kelvin, Greg Rogers, and William Kubitz, "A Critical Evaluation of PEX," IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 65-75, November, 1990. An evaluation of PEX, the X exten- sion to support PHIGS, from the point of view of a PHIGS implementor. Sun Microsystems, OPEN LOOK Graphical User Interface Series, Addison- Wesley, 1990. ISBN 0-201-52365-5, ISBN 0-201-52364-7. This series in- cludes Functional Specification and Application Style Guide. They describe the OPEN LOOK user interface, not any particular implementa- tion. OPEN LOOK was designed by AT&T and Sun and implementations are available from both. AT&T's implementation uses the X Toolkit. Sun's implementation uses XView, a similar, but not compatible, toolkit. - 15 - Swick, Ralph R. and Mark S. Ackerman, "The X Toolkit: More Bricks for Building User Interfaces," in Proceedings of the Winter, 1988 USENIX Conference, pp. 221-233. An introduction to the X Toolkit. Describes the toolkit architecture and the basic Athena widgets. Terek, Robert and Josepth Pasquale, "Experiences with Audio Conferencing Using the X Window System, UNIX, and TCP/IP," in Proceedings of the Summer, 1991 USENIX Conference, pp. 405-418. Describes an X protocol extension supporting audio. Tharenja, Ashok K. and Sridhar Ramachandran, "Migration From ASCII To X," UNIX Review, vol. 9, no. 11, pp. 35-38, November, 1991. A discussion on user-level issues on converting from a character terminal environ- ment to an X environment. Thomas, Spencer W. and Martin Friedmann, "PEX - A 3-D Extension to X Win- dows," in Proceedings of the Winter, 1989 USENIX Conference, pp. 139- 149. Describes a demonstration implementation of PEX, the PHIGS/PHIGS+ 3D extension to X. Treggiari, Leo and Michael Collins, "Development of the XUI Toolkit," Digi- tal Technical Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 24-33, Summer, 1990. An overview of the XUI widget set. The Motif widget set uses the same application programming interface. Widener, Glenn, "The X11 Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual," Software Practice and Experience, vol. 20, no. S2, October, 1990. This is not a copy of the ICCCM, but an overview of its goals and features. Widener, Glenn and Vania Joloboff, "Developing Internationalized X Clients," The X Resource, vol. 0, pp. 133-152, Fall, 1991. An over- view of the new internationalization (localization) features of the X11R5 Xlib and Xt. They are based on the ANSI C setlocale function. Wilson, Dave, "X Windows Terminals Designers Search For a Single-Processor Solution," Computer Design, pp. 77-88, August, 1991. A look at X ter- minal hardware design issues. Wood, Patrick, "Introduction to Xlib Programming (2 parts)," UNIX World, vol. 6, October-November, 1989. This is a two part tutorial article on Xlib programming. Not as good as Rosenthal's ``hello, world'' arti- cle. X/Open Company, Ltd., X/Open Portability Guide: Window Management, Prentice-Hall, 1988. X/Open is an international user group of UNIX hardware and software developers. It publishes portability guidelines with the goal that developers that follow these guidelines will be portable across other hardware and software supporting the guidelines. The current X/Open window management guidelines are based on the X11R3 specifications. They will probably be upgraded to a more recent ver- sion of X in their next revision. - 16 - Young, Douglas, Object-Oriented Programming with C++ and OSF/Motif, Prentice-Hall, 1992. 0-13-630252-1. Not yet reviewed. This is ap- parently the only detailed book on this subject. Young, Douglas A., X Window System: Programming and Applications With Xt, OSF/Motif Edition, Prentice-Hall, 1990. ISBN 0-13-497074-8. This book is popular with Motif beginners, but it is based on X11R3 and Motif 1.0, so is somewhat out-of-date. The Motif user interface language (UIL) is not covered at all. The section on subclassing widgets is also weak: see the Asente & Swick book for better coverage there. Young, Douglas A., OSF/Motif Reference Manual, Prentice-Hall, 1990. ISBN 0-13-642786-3. A reference manual for the most popular C language Motif and Xt functions. The UIL interface to Motif is not covered at all. Young, Douglas A., "Programming with the X Toolkit (3 parts)," UNIX World, vol. 7, no. 1-3, January-March, 1990. This three part tutorial arti- cle is based on Young's books on the X Toolkit. Young, Douglas A. and John A. Pew, X Window System: Programming and Appli- cations With Xt, Open Look Edition, Prentice-Hall, 1991. ISBN 0-13- 982992-X. A tutorial on X Toolkit programming, using AT&T's Open Look Intrinsics Toolkit (OLIT). Ken Lee DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif. Internet: klee@wsl.dec.com uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee --- C.x/x/pop/doc/xbibliography