X11 on MacOS X

There are currently two choices, Tenon's Xtools or XFree86 for darwin. Officially, only Xtools support rootless mode, in which X11 applications and MacOS X applications can coexist in Aqua. Both Xtools and XFree86 for darwin support rooted mode (full screen mode) where XFree86 is 10-20% faster.
I noticed some problems with Xtools's rootless mode and decided to use the full screen mode. Tenon's Xtools support dynamic (shared) libraries while the current XFree86 does not (there seems to be some patch to make them though).


Xtools

You can get a trial version (1.0 in my case) from

http://www.tenon.com
which can be downloaded via IE.  Once you get the installer package, clicking on the installer icon does everything for you.

XFree86

If you have already installed Xtools and want to keep it, do

# cd /etc
# mv X11 X11.tenon
# cd /usr
# mv X11R6 X11R6.tenon

You can download precompiled binary packages from

http://www.xfree86.org
or you can compile it for yourself: since the binary distribution does not provide dynamic libraries, I am planning to compile it myself in near future. Once the correct set of tar-balls are retrieved, the installation is a matter of just rununig a shell script:

# cd <somewhere>
# sh Xinstall.sh
# tar -zxpvf XAqua0.5.tgz -C /

and answering some questions. Read Install for details.
 

Customization of X11

Optionally, you can add more fonts as you need: in my case, I added small fonts for my PowerBook's LCD.

# cd <somewhere>/fonts
# ls
6x12rk.pcf.gz             fonts.alias.75dpi.added   s5x8.pcf.gz
a12.pcf.gz                fonts.alias.misc.added
elisau10.pcf.gz           k12.pcf.gz
# cp *.gz /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/
# mkfontdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/
# cat fonts.alias.75dpi.added >> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/fonts.alias
# cat fonts.alias.misc.added >> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias

To switch from Xtools to XF86, or vice versa Swap

 /etc/X11
 /usr/X11R6
That's it. Be careful for key and mouse button assignments. Be also careful that /private/etc/X11 is a real directory unlike in Xtools where it is a symbolik link.


Back to Keisuke Fujii's HEP on X Page
fujiik@jlcuxf.kek.jp March 18, 2001