Introduction to the X Window System
This presentation was originally developed by Stuart
Anderson & Ernie Coskrey for internal use at the Columbia, SC plant
of NCR Corporation in Nov. 1992. It is now (May 1999) being dusted off
and updated for general use, but is initially being presented to Linux
Users Groups (particularly ColaLUG
and FLUX). The material contained here
was originally written for X11R5 as ported to NCR's SVR4/MP-RAS Operating
System. Many references to R5 are still present (but will eventually be
cleaned up), and a few things that are specific to MP-RAS are also still
present. Largely, however, the material remains unchanged for R6, and stands
as a testament to the stability of the X Window System.
The information here is a distillation of the
information otherwise available in official documentation, and also from
O'Reilly & Associate's very complete series of book on the X Window
System. One way of viewing this presentation is as a large "cheat sheet"
based on the other documentation.
Architecture
X libraries
These sections are based on the X Toolkit Intrinsics that are a part
of the X Window System. This information is not applicable to GUI libraries
that are not build on the X Toolkit Intrinsics.
Widgets
Resources
Newer GUIs such as KDE & GNOME were not around when this presentation
was originally created in 1992. Sections with corresponding information
for resources should be inserted here when they are developed.
Color
Fonts
Starting an X Session
Window Manager
Other Clients