XLIB Programming Manual, Rel. 5, Third Edition

Acknowledgements

The information contained in this manual is based in part on Xlib-C Language X Interface, written by Jim Gettys, Ron Newman, and Robert Scheifler, and the X Window System Protocol, Version 11, by Robert Scheifler (with many contributors). The X Window System software and these documents were written under the auspices of Project Athena at MIT. In addition, this manual includes material from Oliver Jones’ Xlib tutorial presentation, which was given at the MIT X Conference in January 1988, and from David Rosenthal’s Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual. I owe a great debt to the X Consortium policy allowing others to build on their work.

I would like to thank the people who helped this book come into being. It was Tim O’Reilly who originally sent me out on a contract to write a manual for X Version 10 for a workstation manufacturer and later to another company to write a manual for X Version 11, from which this book began. I have learned most of what I know about computers and technical writing while working for Tim. For this book, he acted as an editor, he helped me reorganize several chapters, he worked on the Color and Managing User Preferences chapters when time was too short for me to do it, and he kept my spirits up through this long project. While I was concentrating on the details, his eye was on the overall presentation, and his efforts improved the book enormously.

This book would not be as good (and we might still be working on it) had it not been for Daniel Gilly. Daniel was my production assistant for critical periods in the project. He dealt with formatting issues, checked for consistent usage of terms and noticed irregularities in content, and edited files from written corrections by me and by others. His job was to take as much of the work off me as possible, and with his technical skill and knowledge of UNIX, he did that very well.

This manual has benefitted from the work and assistance of the entire staff of O’Reilly and Associates, Inc. Sue Willing was responsible for graphics and design, and she proofed many drafts of the book; Linda Mui tailored the troff macros to the design by Sue Willing and myself and was invaluable in the final production process; John Strang figured out the resource manager and wrote the original section on that topic; Karen Cakebread edited a draft of the manual and established some conventions for terms and format. Peter Mui executed the “at-a-glance” tables for the inside back cover; Tom Scanlon entered written edits and performed copy fitting; Donna Woonteiler wrote the index of the book; Valerie Quercia, Tom Van Raalte, and Linda Walsh all contributed in some small ways; and Cathy Brennan, Suzanne Van Hove, and Jill Berlin fielded many calls from people interested in the X manual and saved me all the time that would have taken. Ruth Terry, Lenny Muellner, and Donna Woonteiler produced the Second Edition, with graphics done by Chris Reilley. Mike Sierra produced the Third Edition. A special thanks to everyone at O’Reilly and Associates for putting up with my habits of printer and terminal hogging, lugging X books around, recycling paper, and for generally being good at what they do and good-natured to boot.

David Flanagan wrote much of the material on X11R5, which appeared originally in his book Programmer’s Supplement for Release 5. I’m sincerely grateful to him for doing such a great job.

I would also like to thank the people from other companies that reviewed the book or otherwise made this project possible: John Posner, Barry Kingsbury, Jeff MacMann and Jeffrey Vroom of Stellar Computer; Oliver Jones of Apollo Computer; Sam Black, Jeff Graber, and Janet Egan of Masscomp; Al Tabayoyon, Paul Shearer, and many others from Tektronix; Robert Scheifler and Jim Fulton of the X Consortium (who helped with the Color and Managing User Preferences chapters), and Peter Winston II and Aub Harden of Integrated Computer Solutions. Despite the efforts of the reviewers and everyone else, any errors that remain are my own.

— Adrian Nye