Yes, prebuild binaries in tarball form will appear over the next few days on the XFree86 ftp site. Shortly thereafter a GUI installer will be posted here.
>2. Does 4.4 show any benefits over Apple's X11?
They are very similar in many ways. Depending on your particular needs you may find one has a compelling feature that the other does not offer. The upcoming 4.4.0 release is expected to be the basis for future releases of Apple's X11. XFree86 4.4.0 provides identical performance to Apple's X11 on Panther and is fully compatible with quartz-wm. In addition this release fixes several bugs present in Apple's X11.
BUG FIXES:
1. Threaded direct GLX works correctly.
2. The X11 GL library does not export all the GLU symbols.
3. All scripts and man pages do not begin with "#pragma" line. This bug causes various problems including scripts not working for users with tcsh as their shell and manpage formatting being broken.
4. The Freetype library is fully backwards compatible with earlier versions. (This was a bug in XFree86 4.3.0, which Apple's X11 inherited.)
FEATURE DIFFERENCES:
1. XFree86 supports IPv6.
2. There is no "pseudo-fullscreen" mode. XFree86's fullscreen mode has a real root window which works with xmag and twm, but you can't dynamically switch between fullscreen and rootless modes.
3. XFree86 does not track Aqua keyboard layout changes while it is running. XFree86 reads the Aqua keyboard layout at startup time. While running, the X11 keymap should be changed with xmodmap.
4. XFree86 is supported back to Mac OS X 10.1.
5. XFree86 only interprets Command key shortcuts if the cursor is in the menubar.
6. XFree86 does not support changing the screen layout or color depth while it is running.
7. XFree86 has no "Applications" menu for launching frequently used X11 clients.
8. Hiding the XFree86 application works when using any window manager. (Apple's X11 only supports hiding with quartz-wm.)
9. XFree86 supports cut-and-paste between Aqua and X11 windows when quartz-wm is not running. If quartz-wm is running, XFree86 will let quartz-wm handle cut-and-paste as it generally does a better job.
10. XFree86 allows arbitrary modifier keys to be used in emulating a multi-button mouse. These can be specified from the Preferences UI.
11. XFree86 does not set X_LOCALE on Panther.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
>> "Shortly thereafter a GUI installer will be posted here."
>Is this still in the works? I've always had good success with the GUI installers from this site.
Yes, we still plan to produce a GUI installer using InstallAnywhere. Real life time constraints have made this happen slower then I would have hoped for.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I actually built an XFree86 4.4.0 installer using InstallAnywhere but there is a minor bug in InstallAnywhere that caused the installer to fail on Mac OS X 10.3.4. Their tech support is supposed to be getting back to me any day now about an easy work around. Once that happens it is basically all ready to go.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi,
I see xfree86 4.4 has been tagged and released, so had a couple fo questions:
1. Will a new XDarwin be released?
2. Does 4.4 show any benefits over Apple's X11?
Cheers,
Gavin
>1. Will a new XDarwin be released?
Yes, prebuild binaries in tarball form will appear over the next few days on the XFree86 ftp site. Shortly thereafter a GUI installer will be posted here.
>2. Does 4.4 show any benefits over Apple's X11?
They are very similar in many ways. Depending on your particular needs you may find one has a compelling feature that the other does not offer. The upcoming 4.4.0 release is expected to be the basis for future releases of Apple's X11. XFree86 4.4.0 provides identical performance to Apple's X11 on Panther and is fully compatible with quartz-wm. In addition this release fixes several bugs present in Apple's X11.
BUG FIXES:
1. Threaded direct GLX works correctly.
2. The X11 GL library does not export all the GLU symbols.
3. All scripts and man pages do not begin with "#pragma" line. This bug causes various problems including scripts not working for users with tcsh as their shell and manpage formatting being broken.
4. The Freetype library is fully backwards compatible with earlier versions. (This was a bug in XFree86 4.3.0, which Apple's X11 inherited.)
FEATURE DIFFERENCES:
1. XFree86 supports IPv6.
2. There is no "pseudo-fullscreen" mode. XFree86's fullscreen mode has a real root window which works with xmag and twm, but you can't dynamically switch between fullscreen and rootless modes.
3. XFree86 does not track Aqua keyboard layout changes while it is running. XFree86 reads the Aqua keyboard layout at startup time. While running, the X11 keymap should be changed with xmodmap.
4. XFree86 is supported back to Mac OS X 10.1.
5. XFree86 only interprets Command key shortcuts if the cursor is in the menubar.
6. XFree86 does not support changing the screen layout or color depth while it is running.
7. XFree86 has no "Applications" menu for launching frequently used X11 clients.
8. Hiding the XFree86 application works when using any window manager. (Apple's X11 only supports hiding with quartz-wm.)
9. XFree86 supports cut-and-paste between Aqua and X11 windows when quartz-wm is not running. If quartz-wm is running, XFree86 will let quartz-wm handle cut-and-paste as it generally does a better job.
10. XFree86 allows arbitrary modifier keys to be used in emulating a multi-button mouse. These can be specified from the Preferences UI.
11. XFree86 does not set X_LOCALE on Panther.
> "Shortly thereafter a GUI installer will be posted here."
Is this still in the works? I've always had good success with the GUI installers from this site.
Thanks
>> "Shortly thereafter a GUI installer will be posted here."
>Is this still in the works? I've always had good success with the GUI installers from this site.
Yes, we still plan to produce a GUI installer using InstallAnywhere. Real life time constraints have made this happen slower then I would have hoped for.
Any status on the GUI installer?
Another question - if I install 4.4 over Apple's latest X11, does quartz-wm still work? Does it work better?
>Any status on the GUI installer?
No news yet, but it is a priority for next week. Things have been super busy recently.
> if I install 4.4 over Apple's latest X11, does quartz-wm still work? Does it work better?
quartz-wm works. It should work identically to Apple's X11. Not better or worse.
Hi, I was just searching for the version 4.4 XDarwin installer. Apparently it does not exist.
Will it exist in the near future or has this area of the project been halted?
Thank you.
I actually built an XFree86 4.4.0 installer using InstallAnywhere but there is a minor bug in InstallAnywhere that caused the installer to fail on Mac OS X 10.3.4. Their tech support is supposed to be getting back to me any day now about an easy work around. Once that happens it is basically all ready to go.
Thanks for the reply. I'm looking forward to it!