xlibs

xlibs: X Window System client libraries The X libraries are an interface between X client programs and the hardware-oriented X servers, and consist of routines to read input from the keyboard and pointer, draw on the screen, etc., in an abstract manner that is independent of the particular characteristics of the hardware. The X libraries, and the programs that use them, communicate with X servers by means of the X protocol. libX11 (a.k.a. Xlib) provides the low-level functionality, dealing mostly with the wire protocol and in terms of basic operations such as opening and closing the X protocol connection, creating graphics contexts, drawing graphics primitives such as lines, arcs, and glyphs, handling events, and so forth. libXpm, the X pixmap library, is a set of routines used to store and retrieve X pixmaps (a data structure comprising a rectangular array of pixels) from files; the xpm file format is an extension of the monochrome bitmap file format in the X11 specification. (Traditionally, libXpm was maintained and distributed separately from the X Window System, but XFree86 has absorbed this library). libXt, the X Toolkit Intrinsics, is an abstract widget library upon which graphical widget libraries (such as Athena and LessTif) may be developed; the Intrinsics provide a number of useful interfaces to X conventions and protocols, in many cases reducing a long series of Xlib calls to just a couple of Xt calls. libXmu is a set of miscellaneous utility functions useful to client programmers. libXmuu is a very small set of miscellaneous utility functions extracted from Xmu, Xt, and Xaw, for clients that need the occasional useful function from these libraries but do not require the toolkit overhead. To use libXmuu, simply include the headers for the other libraries in the client and link against Xmuu instead of Xmu, Xt, and Xaw. Needless to say, if the client uses functions from Xmu, Xt, or Xaw that are not present in Xmuu, it will fail to link. The remainder of the libraries in this package implement the client side of various X protocol extensions: - libICE, the Inter-Client Exchange extension; - libPEX5, PEX, a 3D graphics extension now superseded by Mesa/OpenGL; - libSM, the Session Management extension; - libXIE, the X Image Extension; - libXext, a collection of several commonly-used extensions; - libXft, a FreeType-based font rendering extension; - libXi, the X Input extension; - libXp, the X Printing extension; and - libXrender, an extension for digital image composition; - libXtst, the X Testing extension. xlibs also contains the XKB keyboard parameter files, locale data, and a set of bitmap and pixmap image files commonly used by X clients. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

* Linux/Unix/Computing Glossary Index