Functionality

X-BIG-X maps arbitrary large virtual display areas - so-called meta screens - on one or more real screens of an X Window server. The dimensions of the screens do not matter. Screens may overlap or leave gaps. The visible areas may be arbitrarily positioned on the virtual area by moving the mouse pointer.

The related product X-META-X meets further requirements like the combination of multiple X Window servers.

X Window proxy

X-BIG-X is neither a stand-alone X Window server nor a specialized window manager. The X-BIG-X proxy is stacked between the X Window server of the workstation and the X Window clients via inter-process communication. It is executed instead of the X Window server and calls the server.

Managing the communication between server and clients, X-BIG-X breaks the fixed relation between display area and communication port of an X server .

This is totally transparent for any X Window server. X-BIG-X flawlessly cooperates with workstation or terminal vendor supplied servers as well as with many specialized servers. Furthermore, clients cannot detect any differences to the standard X Window server. Thus, you may use the usual window managers.

X-BIG-X can combine rather different screens. To the clients, however, X-BIG-X offers only the subset of common features of the controlled screens of each meta screen.

X11 protocol and protocol extensions

X-BIG-X is based on the META technology for decoding and encoding of the X11 protocol. The software supports the complete X11R6 protocol.

X-BIG-X supports the protocol extensions BIG-REQUESTS, DOUBLE-BUFFER, DPMS, GLX (OpenGL, Version 1.2 with some additional requests of version 1.3), MIT-SCREEN-SAVER, MIT-SHM, Multi-Buffering, SCREEN-SAVER, SHAPE, SUN_ALLPLANES, SYNC, XC-MISC, XIE, XPRINT, and XTEST. The protocol extension MIT-SHM is always offered to the X Window clients, even if the controlled X Window server does not support it. In this case the extension requests are translated into the corresponding X11 core protocol requests automatically. The protocol extension XTEST is offered to the X Window clients provided that the controlled X Window server supports at least one of the extensions DEC-XTRAP, XTEST, and XTestExtension1.

X-BIG-X supports the X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP) as well as the authorization methods host access control, MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1, and XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1.

Options

The option CHANNEL increases the maximum number of output channels - screens - supported by the X-BIG-X proxy by an arbitrary number of channels. Without option the proxy supports not more than three channels.

Configuration

X-BIG-X is highly configurable from the command line and through configuration files. In spite of the great number of configuration statements the software is configured very easily, starting with reasonable default values.

Improvements and enhancements of version 7.0

The overall performance of the X-BIG-X proxy was further improved.

The number of supported protocol extensions were increased and the version levels were updated.

The proxy now interprets the XINERAMA center hints.

X-BIG-X supports up to three screens. Additional screens can be licensed using the option CHANNEL. This allowed to lower the price of the base product significantly.

The statement keepWindowsVisible always keeps all windows totally or partly visible.

The statement workarounds glx13 implements a few important requests of version 1.3 of the GLX protocol extension.

Improvements and enhancements of version 7.1

The overall performance of the X-BIG-X proxy was further improved.

The number of supported protocol extensions were increased and the version levels were updated.

Supported architectures

X-BIG-X is available for the following operating systems:

• Hewlett-Packard HP-UX (PA-RISC) 11,
• Hewlett-Packard Tru64 UNIX (Digital UNIX, DEC OSF/1, Compaq Tru64, Alpha) from 3.2 on,
• IBM AIX (PowerPC) from 4.3 on,
• Linux (x86 from Pentium Pro on),
• SGI IRIX (Mips) from 6.2 on,
• Sun Solaris 7, 8, 9, 10 (SPARC from V7+ on),
• Sun Solaris 7, 8, 9, 10 (x86 from Pentium Pro on).

Order Information

The software can be downloaded from the SMART ALEC DOWNLOAD TRAY server.

A license key allows to use the software either on one individual computer (node-locked) or overall in a local network (floating). License keys can be requested by e-mail, fax, or phone.

Without a license key the X-BIG-X proxy runs in evaluation mode with full functionality. However, it terminates after 30 minutes at least with a warning message.

There are two ways for updating to the current version. With the update product you get the license key for the current version once, whereas the maintenance plan entitles you to receive the license key for the then current version during one year.

Please address your orders to <xbigx-sales@x-software.com>.