David Rosenthal reflects on his involvement with the development
of the X Window System:
Although most of my time was spent developing NeWS, I
rapidly
ported X version 10 to the Sun/1, likely the second port to
non-DEC hardware. It worked, but I had to kludge several areas
that depended on DEC-specific hardware. The worst was the
completely DEC-specific keyboard support.
Because it was clear that a major redesign of X was needed to
make it portable and in particular to make it work well on Sun
hardware, Gosling and I worked with the teams at DEC SRC and WRL
on the design of X version 11. Gosling provided significant
input on the imaging model, and I designed the keyboard
support. As the implementation evolved I maintained the Sun port
and did a lot of testing and bug fixing. All of which led to my
trip to Boston to pull all-nighters at MIT finalizing the
release.
My involvement continued after the first release. I was the
editor and main author of the X Inter-Client Communications
Conventions Manual (ICCCM) that forms Part III of Robert
Scheifler and Jim Gettys' X Window System.
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https://blog.dshr.org/2024/07/x-window-system-at-40.html
Alexis.