X Window System: The Complete Reference to Xlib, X Protocol, Icccm, Xlfd (Digital Press X and Motif Series) (Paperback)

by Robert W. Scheifler (Author), James Gettys (Author) "The X Window System is a network-transparent window system that was designed at MIT..." (more)
Key Phrases: ndow errors, ndow request, returned color specification, Host Portable Character Encoding, Screen White Point, Psychometric Chroma (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
X Window System, the complete Reference conforms to Release 5 and is four books in one! * Part I, Xlib - C Language X Interface, describes the lowest level C language X programming interface to the X Window System. Essential for all X programmers, even those using higher level toolkits such as X Toolkit Intrinsics. * Part II, X Window System Protocol, details the precise specification of the X protocol semantics. * Part III, Inter-Client Communications Conventions Manual, discusses the conventions that govern X inter-client communication. * Part IV, X Logical Font Description, describes the conventions for font names and font properties in the X Window System.

From the Publisher
Written by the experts who originally designed and created the X Window System, this Third Edition is a major revision of the definitive reference describing each standard specification from the MIT X Consortium. It conforms to the latest release: XVersion 11, Release 5. With this latest edition in hand, software developers and others can now take advantage of the significant new functionality in Release 5. And, in addition to fully integrating the important new features of this latest release, the original text has been significantly revised for clarity and easier access. Instructive diagrams, a detailed glossary, and a comprehensive subject-oriented index further enhance the book's overall value.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1000 pages
• Publisher: Digital Press; 3 Sub edition (February 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555580882
• ISBN-13: 978-1555580889
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,612,397 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superseded by three newer books, October 23, 2000

By	Harold L. Hunt (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book has been updated and split into three books:

X Window System: Core Libraries and Standards (1996, 700pp)

X Window System: Core and Extension Protocols (1997, 700pp)

X Window System: Extension Libraries (1997, 400pp)

Each of the new books covers through X11 Release 6.1.

I own this book, but I do not own the three newer books (I didn't know that they were replacements for this book). I contribute to the XFree86 project, an implementation of the X Window System, and I find this book to be useful in understanding the operations of X; I have not written a program that uses X11 directly, but I can see that this book (or its replacements) would be very useful when doing so.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite good, but somewhat outdated..., September 29, 2002

By	Jo Totland (Oslo, Oslo Norway) - See all my reviews

This is a *reference manual*. You will want to read the Xlib Programming manual published by O'Reilly first. And you will only want this book if you want to program X11 directly, as opposed to using a toolkit such as GTK or Qt.

Having said that, this is a *good* reference manual. It contains none of the usual boilerplate text all too common in badly written manuals. It explains every feature of Xlib and the X11(R5) protocols in detail, and how to make best use of them. It is concise, well-organized, and to the point. And the index is actually quite useful.

The book is not entirely up-to-date. It would be better if it also covered some of the newer standards and extensions. There are some minor typos that might be corrected in the newer versions, but none that will give you any trouble. As the book focuses only on core protocols, you must look elsewhere for information on how to interoperate with Motif, Qt/KDE or GTK applications.

In short, if you are going to write some program that uses Xlib or the X11 protocol directly, this book will help you. And the differences between X11R5 and X11R6 are relatively minor and of little interest to the kind of applications most people would write without a toolkit. But still, if you are a toolkit developer, I would consider buying a newer book.