README
1Cygwin/X Release Notes
2======================
3
4Release X11R6.7
5===============
6
7Cygwin/X has continued its rapid pace of development that it has sustained
8since Spring 2001 and this release shows it, we now have: a stable and fast
9multi-window mode, seamless clipboard integration, a configurable tray menu
10icon, popups on error messages pointing users to the log file and our mailing
11list, the beginnings of indirect 3D acceleration for OpenGL applications,
12improved non-US keyboard and clipboard support, and only a handful of bugs
13that continue to be reported.
14
15Between the XFree86 4.3.0 release and the X.Org X11R6.7 release the Cyg-
16win/XFree86 project broke away from The XFree86 Project, Inc. due to a lack
17of support from the XFree86 project. As such, the Cygwin/XFree86 project was
18renamed to the Cygwin/X project and the upstream source code tree that Cyg-
19win/X pulls from and pushes to is now the tree managed by the X.Org Founda-
20tion. The Cygwin/X project has seen a rush of development and interest in
21the project since the split; one metric showing this is that the number of
22CVS committers we have has gone from zero to six.
23
24The most outstanding features of this release are
25
26 o Major multi-window mode improvements. (Takuma Murakami, Earle F.
27 Philhower III)
28
29 o Initial work of accelerated OpenGL using the windows OpenGL drivers.
30 (Alexander Gottwald)
31
32 o Massive rework of clipboard integration with windows. (Harold L Hunt II,
33 Kensuke Matsuzaki)
34
35 o Improved Japanese clipboard and keyboard support. (Kensuke Matsuzaki,
36 Takuma Murakami, Alexander Gottwald)
37
38 o Customizable tray menu icon allowing shortcuts to start programs,
39 etc.(Earle F. Philhower III)
40
41 o New icons. (Jehan Bing, Michael Bax, Benjamin Rienfenstahl)
42
43 o Fix some multi-monitor problems.(Takuma Murakami)
44
45 o Fix repeated key strokes. (Ivan Pascal)
46
47 o Automatic keyboard layouts for the most frequently used keyboard lay-
48 outs. (Alexander Gottwald)
49
50 o Built in SHM support with detection of the SHM engine (cygserver).
51 (Ralf Habacker, Harold L Hunt II)
52
53 o Merged in work on the NativeGDI engine. (Alan Hourihane)
54
55OpenGL with Cygwin/X
56====================
57
58Cygwin/X has supported GLX only with software rendering provided by the Mesa
59library. Starting with X11R6.7 we add support for hardware accelerated OpenGL.
60
61This support is still under development and still has some bigger problems.
62To provide both versions (the stable software rendering and the new hardware
63accelerated) we ship to binaries. XWin.exe contains the software rendering
64and XWin_GL.exe uses the hardware acceleration provided by the windows drivers.
65
66The known problems with hardware accelerated OpenGL are:
67
68 o Only multiwindow mode is useful. In the other modes the OpenGL output
69 does not align with the X11 windows.
70
71 o Using two programs which require different visuals will fail. For example
72 glxgears and glxinfo will not work without restarting XWin_GL.exe.
73
74 o OpenGL extensions and functions from OpenGL 1.2 and later should work
75 but are not completely tested.
76
77 o The standard Windows OpenGL driver will produce no output. Use the one
78 from your video adapter vendor.
79
80If you notice problems with some programs please send a message with the
81logfile /tmp/XWin.log and a short error description to <cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com>
82
83The hardware accelerated OpenGL was tested using:
84
85 o glxgears
86 o glxinfo
87 o blender
88 o tuxkart
89 o GLUT demos (some did fail)
90 o tuxracer (currently not working)
91
92
93Release X11R6.8
94===============
95
96Having reached a quite mature state in release X11R6.7 the development
97has slowed down a little bit. Some of the former active developers have
98retired or cut their work for the Cygwin/X project due to conflicts with
99job, study and family.
100
101The X11R6.8 release now includes major improvements from the xserver project.
102This includes the XFixes, Damage, Composite and XEVIE extension which is a
103major step towards allowing Cygwin/X to have real transparency.
104
105But at the current state Composite is not working with Cygwin/X. Not all code
106in the Cygwin/X Server has been updated to support the Composite feature and
107using it will even crash the xserver. But as a second problem nearly all
108functions required for compositing are lacking acceleration in Cygwin/X so
109the feature would not be very useful if it would work. So it is disabled by
110default.
111
112OpenGL with Cygwin/X
113====================
114
115The OpenGL support has lost some of it's limitations from the last release
116and should be much more stable. But due to missing wide spread testing in
117the community it is still available in a separate program. XWin still uses
118the old software OpenGL which is known to be stable.
119
120The known problems with hardware accelerated OpenGL are:
121
122 o Only multiwindow mode is useful. In the other modes the OpenGL output
123 does not align with the X11 windows.
124
125 o OpenGL extensions and functions from OpenGL 1.2 and later should work
126 but are not completely tested.
127
128 o The standard Windows OpenGL driver will produce no output. Use the one
129 from your video adapter vendor.
130
131If you notice problems with some programs please send a message with the
132logfile /tmp/XWin.log and a short error description to <cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com>
133
134The hardware accelerated OpenGL was tested using:
135
136 o glxgears
137 o glxinfo
138 o blender
139 o tuxkart
140 o GLUT demos (some did fail)
141
142