26 October 2009 -- The X.Org Foundation and the global community of X.Org developers announce the release of X11R7.5 - Release 7.5 of the X Window System, Version 11. This release is the sixth modular release of the X Window System. The next full release will be X11R7.6 and is expected in 2010.
X11R7.5 supports Linux, BSD, Solaris, MacOS X, Microsoft Windows and GNU Hurd systems. It incorporates new features, and stability and correctness fixes, including improved autoconfiguration heuristics, enhanced support for input devices, and new options for reconfiguring the screen geometry while the system is running.
The full source code is free to use, modify and redistribute, under open source licenses, and is available from http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.5/ and mirrors worldwide.
For more information on the X Window System, including how to get involved with development, please see http://www.x.org.
Summary of new features in X11R7.5
This is a sampling of the new features in X11R7.5. A more complete list of changes can be found in the ChangeLog files that are part of the source of each X module and on the http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.5/ website.
More information on the contents of X11R7.5 and changes from previous releases can also be found in the release notes posted at:
Multi-Pointer X (MPX) provides the user with multiple independent mouse cursors and multiple independent keyboard foci. Each cursor is a true system cursor and different pointers can operate in multiple applications simultaneously.
Input device properties allow you to attach properties to a device. These properties can be of arbitrary type and can be changed without the server having to know their details.
The X Input Extension version 2.0 (XI2) is designed to replace both core input processing and prior versions of the X Input Extension. Besides MPX, it provides a number of other enhancements over version 1.5, including:
- explicit device hierarchy of master and slave devices.
- the ability for devices to change capabilities at runtime.
- raw device events
Resize, Rotate and Reflect Extension (RANDR) version 1.3 builds on the changes made with version 1.2 and adds some new capabilities without fundmentally changing the extension again. The following features are added in this version:
Projective Transforms: The implementation work for general rotation support made it trivial to add full projective transformations. These can be used to scale the screen up/down as well as perform projector keystone correct or other effects.
Panning: Panning was removed with RandR 1.2 because the old semantics didn't fit any longer. With RandR 1.3 panning can be specified per crtc.
The DRI2 extension is designed to associate and access auxillary rendering buffers with an X drawable. It is a essentially a helper extension to support implementation of direct rendering drivers/libraries/technologies. The first consumer of this extension is a direct rendering OpenGL driver, but the DRI2 extension is not designed to be OpenGL specific. Work is underway to utilize DRI2 for the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) as well. Direct rendering implementations of OpenVG, Xv, cairo and other graphics APIs should find the functionality exposed by this extension helpful and hopefully sufficient.