window system

W is a simple, socket based, two-color window system by Torsten Scherer (and has no relation to that better known X's predecessor with a same name). W 1 release 4 beta main features are:

• Uses sockets for communicating with client applications.
• Supports line, box, circle, ellipse, polygon and bezier graphics functions in solid and patterned modes. Only one line width.
• Replace, clear, invert and transparent graphics modes (block and text functions use only replace mode).
• Supports both monospaced and proportional bitmap fonts (at the moment there are only monospaced fonts available). Different font styles can be achieved by setting the desired font style for the window or by loading an appropiate font.
• Graphics primitives are offset to a window and window contents are stored by the server (redraws are performed by the server).
• Server has window manager builtin (focus follows mouse).
• Windows can have subwindows. Currently windows have only close and iconization gadgets. Window resizing is coming.
• A widget toolkit for easing up user interface creation. Currently available widgets include different containers: box, form, menu, (Tk style) packer, pane, shell (=root window), top, viewport + composite / `simple' widgets: arrow-, check-, push-, radiobutton, dial, drawable, edittext, getstring, html (HTML-1), icon/label, listbox, menu, popup, range, scrollbar, text, topwindow and vt (vt52).
• Server is two-color, but supports planar (packed) and chunky (direct) color graphics modes in addition to monochrome. Fourth revision will support color setting.
• Small. W server and applications take about 1/4 of the RAM and disk space needed by X (when comparing statically linked binaries).
• Has been reported to work on m68k Linux, Atari MiNT, SunOS and Amiga NetBSD. A x86-Linux port with SVGAlib based framebuffer emulation and a MacMiNT version are on the works. See for technical info to see what graphics modes W supports.

To compile and use W you'll need a small unix like setup with networking and at least 4MB of ram and free disk space.

Other information:

• Currently available W clients.
• Technical information about the W window system.
• A comparison between W1R4 and X11R5.
• W inter-client protocol draft.
• W font server draft.
• A short W history.
• Things TODO.

The standard W1R3 sources are available through TeSche's WWW page.

Kay's got now a page for his W Toolkit. It will help a lot in making more complex applications.

W is fairly portably but the screen is expected to be accessed as any other part of memory (eg. mmap()'ing the framebuffer device) and linearily. Planar bitplane graphics drivers use ATM big-endian byte order.

As W server interface and sources are under a lot of modifications, there's not much point in obtaining the developement sources unless you'll want to be a W developer too. To this date everything has needed a recompilation or linking after a new release.