[forum] Help needed for Wikipedia article on X Window System

[Marc Aurele La France]

>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System

> I've been working on getting this article to a sufficiently complete
> condition for Featured Article status (which gives it a chance of
> getting on the front page). I'm after assistance with both the history
> and the technical side.

> * The history covers the early days (straight out of "X Window System
> v 6 & 6.1") and recent events (which I hope are described sufficiently
> accurately while staying concise). There's the yawning void in the
> middle to cover.

> * The technical section is skimpy. It really really needs a decent
> explanation of how extensions work, for example.

> This would all need to be according to checkable references, not just
> me asking here :-)

> I'm particularly after photos and screenshots and so on. What did X1
> look like? X11R1? A photo of an X terminal? If anyone has photos
> they're willing to release under the GFDL, they would do a lot to
> brighten up the article.

> Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:X_Window_System .

> Anyone can edit themselves on Wikipedia, of course, and their writing
> will be edited mercilessly ;-)

> Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

A couple of comments on this:

Under "X.Org and XFree86", you write:

"In May 1999, the Open Group formed X.Org.  X.Org supervised the release of 
versions X11R6.5.1 onward.  X development at this time was moribund [4].
Most technical innovation was happening in the XFree86 project."

Actually, that's true from 1992 on.  So there you have it:  13 years 
of leadership crowbarred into a single sentence.  This represents the highest 
compression ratio in this entire document, far exceeding even bzip2's 
capabilities.  Compare this to the treatment given by the same document to a 
project barely a year old, and I see a "balance" stereotypically displayed by 
most media.

Under "Future Directions", you write:

"Hardware manipulation is being moved to the kernel, with the video hardware 
being accessed only via OpenGL and the Direct Rendering Infrastructure 
module, introduced in XFree86 version 4 and present in X11R6.7 and later [19] 
(http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/xserver_ols2004/)."

Translation:  The fork's overwhelming thrust is Linux & Cygwin, with a few 
*BSD'ers thrown in for good measure.  Gone are design considerations that 
would facilitate X on all existing platforms, commercial & otherwise. 
Already, the OS-independent framework the fork inherited from XFree86 is 
being consciously eroded and/or left to bit rot.  This is due to the Linux 
world currently being seen as most lucrative.

The rest of this doesn't need further comment.

Marc.

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