X circa 1992

[Alan Coopersmith]

On 05/ 3/13 11:20 PM, Geruva Publications wrote:
> Gentlemen,
>
> I am looking at the adaptation of a fairly sizable software package to a more
> modern (Linux) environment. The package in it's present state is configured to
> use X for graphics, but it appears to date from about 1992.
>
> In some of the release notes, it is stated that for the system will only work
> with "variants 31 - 39". Troubling, but I have no idea what this means, but one
> of you might.

Sorry, but I've never heard of such a reference to X like that either.
Are you sure that's not a reference to some aspect of your application?

 > In any event, I would like to have some idea about what would be
> needed to move to contemporary X11. If you could provide some kind of guidance
> or starting point for my inquiry, I would be most appreciative.

I'd suggest just trying to build it.   The libX11 library just celebrated 25 
years of maintaining backwards compatibility, and it really hasn't changed
that much - mainly X evolves via adding new extensions to provide new features.
If you can benefit from some of the new extensions, like Xrender or Xrandr,
you may want to look into them later, but I'd start with just seeing how close
it is to just working now.   Some extensions have been dropped over the years,
like PEX & XIE, so ancient applications may hit some roadbumps with those, but
without knowing anything about your application, it's hard to guess what it
may have used.


-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-              alan.coopersmith at oracle.com
	 Oracle Solaris Engineering - http://blogs.oracle.com/alanc