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In computing , a windowing system (or window system ) is a software suite that manages separately different parts of display screens . It is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) which implements the WIMP ( windows , icons , menus , pointer ) paradigm for a user interface .

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32-398: XQuartz is an open-source version of the X.Org X server , a display server for the X Window System (sometimes shortened to X11 or X) that runs on macOS . It formally replaced Apple's internal X11 app. The name "XQuartz" derives from Quartz , part of the macOS Core Graphics framework, to which XQuartz connects these applications. XQuartz allows cross-platform applications using X11 for

64-417: A Unix -like kernel, such as Linux or BSD ). It receives user input data (e.g. from evdev on Linux) and passes it to one of its clients. The display server also receives data from its clients; it processes the data, it does the compositing and on Linux it passes the data to one of three kernel components – DRM , gem or KMS driver . The component writes the data into the framebuffer and content of

96-412: A tiling interface where they are not allowed to overlap. Usually a window decoration is drawn around each window. The programming of both the window decoration and of available widgets inside of the window, which are graphical elements for direct user interaction, such as sliders, buttons, etc., is eased and simplified through the use of widget toolkits . The main component of any windowing system

128-552: A Wayland compositor is responsible for handling input and output for its clients and, in contrast to X11, the compositing as well. Examples are Weston , Mutter , KWin or Enlightenment . Wayland compositors communicate with Wayland clients over the Wayland display server protocol . This protocol defines that clients can directly write data into the framebuffer using the EGL rendering API . The display server still gets to decide which window

160-430: A laptop keyboard), or a membrane. Other keyboards do not have physical keys, such as a virtual keyboard , or a projection keyboard . A pointing device allows a user to input spatial data to a computer. It is commonly used as a simple and intuitive way to select items on a computer screen on a graphical user interface (GUI), either by moving a mouse pointer , or, in the case of a touch screen, by physically touching

192-431: A line on the screen. It provides an abstraction of the graphics hardware for use by higher-level elements of the graphical interface such as a window manager. A display server protocol can be network capable or even network transparent , facilitating the implementation of thin clients . A display server or window server is a program whose primary task is to coordinate the input and output of its clients to and from

224-552: A relative input mode like that of a touchpad , where the stylus or puck can be lifted and repositioned. Embedded LCD tablets , which are also referred to as graphics tablet monitors, are the extension of digitizing graphics tablets. They enable users to see the real-time positions via the screen while being used. A sensor is an input device which produces data based on physical properties. Sensors are commonly found in mobile devices to detect their physical orientation and acceleration, but may also be found in desktop computers in

256-682: A virtual desktop contained within another window). In Mac OS X Leopard , X11 was updated to use X.Org Server (X11R7.2) rather than XFree86 . The source code for X11 is available from Apple. Some source code is available under the Apple Public Source License while the bulk is licensed under the MIT License . The current version of XQuartz is a DDX (Device Dependent X) included in the X.Org Server and implements support for hardware-accelerated 2D graphics (in versions prior to 2.1), hardware OpenGL acceleration and integration with Aqua ,

288-512: Is "Gralloc". Gralloc handles device memory i.e. it does allocation, arbitration, it handles synchronization via Android/Linux fence file descriptors. Gralloc competes with other solutions like e.g. Mesa's Generic Buffer Management (GBM) or Nvidia's EGLStreams. The Gralloc hardware abstraction layer (HAL) is used to allocate the buffers that underlie "surfaces". For compositing in Android, Surfaces are sent to SurfaceFlinger, which uses OpenGL ES to do

320-428: Is a human interface device which is represented as a matrix of buttons. Each button, or key, can be used to either input an alphanumeric character to a computer, or to call upon a particular function of the computer. It acts as the main text entry interface for most users. Keyboards are available in many form factors, depending on the use case. Standard keyboards can be categorized by its size and number of keys, and

352-417: Is also included with Windows Server 2008, but requires the "Desktop Experience" feature and compatible graphics drivers to be installed. From Windows 8 onwards DWM can't be disabled and is software rendered if no suitable graphics card is installed. Some systems such as Microsoft Windows ( XP , 9x and earlier), the classic Mac OS (version 9 and earlier), and Palm OS , contain a windowing system which

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384-517: Is available under the MIT License , the libwayland-client and libwayland-server libraries. There is an ongoing effort to add Wayland support to ChromeOS . The Mir display server comes with its own Mir display server protocol which is different from those used by X11 and Wayland. Mir additionally supports the X11 protocol. It was developed by Canonical and was intended to be the display server of choice for Ubuntu . As of 2017, it has been replaced with

416-452: Is integrated with the OS. Input device In computing, an input device is a piece of equipment used to provide data and control signals to an information processing system, such as a computer or information appliance. Examples of input devices include keyboards , computer mice , scanners , cameras, joysticks , and microphones . Input devices can be categorized based on: A keyboard

448-432: Is on top and thus visible to the user and also still is responsible for passing data regarding to input devices from evdev to its clients. Wayland is used to a certain degree in some Linux desktop distributions, such as Fedora . It is also well suited for mobile computing and has been adopted, for example, by the smartphone- and tablet-focused projects Tizen , Sailfish OS and AsteroidOS . An implementation of Wayland

480-467: Is required. Input devices, such as buttons and joysticks , can be combined on a single physical device that could be thought of as a composite device. Many gaming devices have controllers like this. Technically mice are composite devices, as they both track movement and provide buttons for clicking, but composite devices are generally considered to have more than two different forms of input. Video input devices are used to digitize images or video from

512-417: Is somewhat counterintuitive in that a "server" is usually thought of as a large, remote machine, whereas a standalone "display server" is a small local system, with most clients being executed on a larger central machine. The explanation is that a display server provides the services of a display and input devices. One example of a display server is the X.Org Server , which runs on top of the kernel (usually

544-416: Is usually called the display server , although alternative denominations such as window server or compositor are also in use. Any application that runs and presents its GUI in a window, is a client of the display server. The display server and its clients communicate with each other over an application programming interface (API) or a communications protocol , which is usually called display server protocol,

576-506: The open source XQuartz project (to which Apple contributes) instead. In Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger , Apple's X11 implemented X11 protocol release 6.6 (X11R6.6). This implementation includes an XFree86 4.4 based X11 window server, Quartz rootless window manager, libraries, and basic utilities such as xterm . "Rootless" means that X window applications show up on the Quartz desktop, appearing like any other windowed Quartz application (that is, not in

608-709: The GUI to run on macOS, many of which are not specifically designed for macOS. This includes numerous scientific and academic software projects. X11.app was initially available as a downloadable public beta for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar and later included as a standard package for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther . In Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger X11.app was an optional install included on the install DVD. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard , Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard , and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion installed X11.app by default, but from OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on Apple dropped dedicated support for X11.app, with users being directed to

640-604: The Wayland display server for desktop editions of Ubuntu. There are implementations of the Mir display server, the libmir-server and the libmir-client libraries available under the GPLv3 . Google developed a display server called SurfaceFlinger for Android : Everything in Android is rendered to a "surface"; "surfaces" are produced by applications and placed into a queue that is managed by SurfaceFlinger. Yet another Android-specific solution

672-399: The compositing. Hardware Composer HAL (HWC) was introduced in Android 3.0 and has evolved steadily over the years. Its primary purpose is to determine the most efficient way to composite buffers with the available hardware. As a HAL, its implementation is device-specific and usually done by the display hardware OEM. For Apple's macOS family of operating systems, Quartz Compositor fulfils

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704-407: The compositing. Examples are Mutter or KWin . Notable examples of display servers implementing the X11 display server protocol are X.Org Server , XFree86 , XQuartz and Cygwin/X , while client libraries implementing the X11 display server protocol are Xlib and XCB . Display servers that implement the Wayland display server protocol are called Wayland compositors . Like any display server,

736-415: The display server being the mediator between the clients and the user. It receives all the input from the kernel , that the kernel receives from all attached input devices , such as keyboard , pointing devices , or touchscreen and transmits it to the correct client. The display server is also responsible for the output of the clients to the computer monitor . The output of sound is usually not managed by

768-480: The display server, but the sound volume is usually handled through GUI applets and it is the display server who decides which applications are on top. A windowing system enables the computer user to work with several programs at the same time. Each program presents its GUI in its own window, which is generally a rectangular area of the screen. From a programmer 's point of view, a windowing system implements graphical primitives. For example: rendering fonts or drawing

800-532: The form of a thermometer used to monitor system temperature. Some sensors can be built with MEMS , which allows them to be microscopic in size. Some devices allow many continuous degrees of freedom as input. These can be used as pointing devices, but are generally used in ways that don't involve pointing to a location in space, such as the control of a camera angle while in 3D applications. These kinds of devices are typically used in virtual reality systems (CAVEs) , where input that registers six degrees of freedom

832-410: The framebuffer is transmitted to the connected screen and displayed. X relies on GLX . One of the implementations of display server concept is X Window System , in particular its actually used version – X.Org Server and Xlib and XCB client libraries. The X.Org Server is a display server, but in its current implementation it relies on a second program, the compositing window manager , to do

864-632: The item on screen. Common pointing devices include mice, touchpads, and touch screens. Whereas mice operate by detecting their displacement on a surface, analog devices, such as 3D mice , joysticks, or pointing sticks, function by reporting their angle of deflection. Pointing devices can be classified on: Direct input is almost necessarily absolute, but indirect input may be either absolute or relative. For example, digitizing graphics tablets that do not have an embedded screen involve indirect input and sense absolute positions and are often run in an absolute input mode, but they may also be set up to simulate

896-436: The macOS graphical user interface (GUI). As of version 2.8.0, XQuartz does not provide support for high-resolution Retina displays to X11 apps, which run in pixel-doubled mode on high-resolution displays. Display server Each currently running application is assigned a usually resizable and usually rectangular surface of the display to present its GUI to the user; these windows may overlap each other, as opposed to

928-507: The outside world into the computer. The information can be stored in a multitude of formats depending on the user's requirement. Many video input devices use a camera sensor . Voice input devices are used to capture sound. In some cases, an audio output device can be used as an input device, in order to capture produced sound. Audio input devices allow a user to send audio info to a computer for processing, recording, or carrying out commands. Devices such as microphones allow users to speak to

960-409: The rest of the operating system, the hardware, and each other. The display server communicates with its clients over the display server protocol, a communications protocol , which can be network-transparent or simply network-capable. The display server is a key component in any graphical user interface , specifically the windowing system. The server/client relationship of a standalone display server

992-409: The tasks of a display server and of a window manager in the windowing system. For Microsoft Windows , from Windows Vista onward, Desktop Window Manager enables the use of hardware acceleration to render the graphical user interface. It was originally created to enable portions of the new "Windows Aero" user experience, which allowed for effects such as transparency, 3D window switching and more. It

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1024-496: The type of switch it employs. Other keyboards cater to specific use cases, such as a numeric keypad or a keyer . Desktop keyboards are typically large, often have full key travel distance, and features such as multimedia keys and a numeric keypad. Keyboards on laptops and tablets typically compromise on comfort to achieve a thin figure. There are various switch technologies used in modern keyboards, such as mechanical switches (which use springs), scissor switches (usually found on

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