NEWS for Python X Library

Version 0.21

Bug Fixes

- fix use under Windows Subsystem for Linux: when DISPLAY does not

specify a protocol, and the implicit Unix socket connection fails,

fallback to TCP (mimicking XCB's behavior).

Misc

- don't bundle a copy of texi2html to build the HTML documentation,

but use the currently installed version instead.

Version 0.20

Bug Fixes

- fix unclosed file in Xauth implementation

- fix support for `Window.set_wm_transient_for`

- fix support for `Drawable.put_image` / `Drawable.get_image`

- use ASCII for decoding strings in Python 3 (same as Python 2)

- fix Python 3 warnings about `array.tostring()` (deprecated)

Misc

Improve response processing performance: reduce the number of

`socket.recv` calls needed to receive a full response.

Version 0.19

Bug Fixes

- don't throw an exception if `$XAUTHFILE` / `~/.Xauthority` is missing

- fix authentication work-around for SSH forwarding under Python 3

- improve `$DISPLAY` handling: support optional protocol prefix, and

correctly handle `unix:0.0` as `:0.0`

Version 0.18

Bug Fixes

- fix Python 3 buffer abstraction

- fix interrupted select handling for Python 3.3/3.4

- fix Unix socket support when only an abstract address is available

Version 0.17

Bug Fixes

- fix Xauth handling when using Python 2 and DISPLAY contains a remote IP

- fix String16 request field handling when using Python 3

- fix RECORD extension and example when using Python 3

- fix handling of properties: use byte strings for all X11 8-bits

strings, as not all of them are text properties (the window

getters/setters for `wm_name`, `wm_icon_name`, `wm_class`, and

`wm_client_machine` still return/expect Unicode strings)

API Changes

Core:

- new window getter/setter for text properties: `get_full_text_property`

and `change_text_property`; with automatic conversion to/from Unicode

when the property type encoding is supported (`STRING` and

`UTF8_STRING`)

Composite extension:

- support for `GetOverlayWindow` request

Version 0.16

Licensing

The project is now licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License

v2.1 or later (see the LICENSE file for details).

Compatibility

Support for Python versions older than 2.7 has been dropped. Support for

Python 3 (3.3, 3.4 and 3.5) has been added. Note that Python-Xlib now

depends on the six package (>=1.10) for combined Python 2 / 3 support.

API Changes

With the change of license, and no way to contact the original author of

the SHAPE extension, the code had to be rewritten from scratch. This

resulted in a few minor API changes (see [examples/shapewin.py](examples/shapewin.py)).

Partial support for the SECURITY. XInput, and XFIXES extensions has been

added.

Bug Fixes

- fix RECORD extension

- fixed OS X socket path

- fix handling of generic events

- fix handling of KeymapNotify events

- several fixes for the RandR extension

Version 0.15rc1 - 14 Nov 2009

Improved support for newer versions of Mac OS X, a couple of new

extensions, and several bugfixes.

Composite extension

Support for the composite extension, used to implement a composition

manager (added for plcm work in plwm).

By itself this extension is not very useful, it is intended to be used

together with the DAMAGE and XFIXES extensions. Typically you would also

need RENDER or glX or some similar method of creating fancy graphics.

XF86 special function keysyms

Keysym definitions for special function keys found on modern keyboards,

e.g. raise and lower volume, start specific applications, etc. Have a

look in [Xlib/keysymdef/xf86.py](Xlib/keysymdef/xf86.py) to see what

there are and experiment with xev to see what your keyboard generates.

These definitions aren't brought in by default, so you must do this

after importing `Xlib.XK`:

Xlib.XK.load_keysym_group('xf86')

RANDR extension

The RANDR extension complements XINERAMA as a way of getting data about

the physical screens making up a virtual screen in X. An example of

usage can be found in [examples/xrandr.py](examples/xrandr.py).

Version 0.14 - 1 Oct 2007 (trialed as 0.14rc1 on 10 Jun 2007)

A couple of new extensions, a Python 2.5 fix and a couple of aliases

(`Display.get_atom()` now uses the internal cache and added

`Window.raise_window()`). Tabs converted to spaces (SF id: 1559082).

RECORD extension (SF id: 1538663)

Alex Badea contributed a RECORD extension module, allowing Python Xlib

programs to capture mouse and keyboard events (or all other core or

extension events) easily. A demo is in the examples directory. See

<http://refspecs.freestandards.org/X11/recordlib.pdf> for more

information.

XINERAMA extension

Mike Meyer contributed a Xinerama extension module, allowing Python Xlib

programs to interrogate the X server about positions and sizes of

multiple screens. Specifications are a bit tricky to find -

<http://sourceforge.net/projects/xinerama/> has some older specs and the

source code of the xorg project (libs & server code) has "definitive"

information.

Python 2.5 fix (SF id: 1623900)

Bugfix to correct handling of XAuthority file parsing under Python 2.5

causing failed authentication.

Version 0.13 - 6 Aug 2006 (trialed as 0.13pre1 on 22 Jul 2006)

A small release to incorporate a number of minor corrections and bug

fixes, including small changes to keysym handling, `.Xauthority`

parsing, several fixes to sending/receiving/flushing data, addition of

`WithdrawnState` to `WMHints`. petli completed documentation for

`Display` objects.

Version 0.12 - 29 Mar 2002

SHAPE extension

Jeffrey Boser contributed a SHAPE extension module, allowing Python Xlib

programs to use shaped windows. Take a look at examples/shapewin.py for

ideas on how to use it. For more information on shaped windows, see

Python 2.2 fix

In Python 2.2 `FCNTL.FD_CLOEXEC` has disappeared and `FCNTL` on the whole

is deprecated, so that had to be dealt with to make the Xlib work with

that version.

Version 0.11 - 23 Feb 2002

Regression tests for the protocol definition

Regressions tests have been created for all requests, replies and

events. The tests use PyUnit, and the old resource database test has

been updated to use it too.

A lot of protocol bugfixes

The bugs discovered by the regression tests have been fixed.

Additionally, a subtle bug in the core engine which could cause a

"can't happen"-error has also been found and fixed.

Version 0.10 - 16 Dec 2001

Event bugfix

The xlib failed to parse the type code of events sent from other clients

using `SendEvent`. This has been fixed, adding the field `send_event' to

all event objects.

Event documentation

The section "Event Types" in the manual has been written, detailing

all event types in the core protocol. The manual is now ten pages

thicker.

Basic support for GetImage/PutImage

The Drawable methods `put_image()` and `get_image()` have been

implemented, but handling image data is still up to the user. There is

however, thanks to Ilpo Nyyssönen, a trivial method `put_pil_image()`

that will work on some combinations of image and drawable depth. It's

not perfect, but it's a start.

Version 0.9 - 4 Dec 2001

Documentation improved

The documentation has been augmented with a chapter about event

handling, and a chapter listing all X objects and their methods provided

by the library. They are not described in any detail, though.

Keysym handling improved

The module `Xlib.XK`, which listed all keysyms, have been split up into

several sub-modules providing different sets of keysyms. By importing

`Xlib.XK` only the miscellany and latin1 sets are loaded, thus removing

some unnecessary clutter.

`Xlib.display.Display` has two new methods (`lookup_string()` and

`rebind_string()`) for translating keysyms into characters.

Small changes to library interface

The order of the `Xlib.display.Display` method `send_event()` parameters

`event_mask` and propagate has changed.

Some of the class names in `Xlib.protocol.event` have changed, to have

the same name as the corresponding event type constant.

A few bugfixes

If a display has more than one screen, the default screen was always set

to the highest numbered one, irrespective of what the user specified in

`$DISPLAY`.

Some response attributes in `Xlib.protocol.request` accidentally included

a comma.

Version 0.8 - 12 Jan 2001

Uses distutils

Python Xlib now uses distutils to make installation and distribution

building easier.

Tested with Python 2.0

A few incompatibilities with Python 2.0 has been fixed.

Version 0.7 - 8 Jan 2001

Fixed the 64-bit platform fix.

As it turns out, the attempted fix for 64-bit platforms in v0.6 didn't

really work. Close study of structmodules.c gave the answer why, and now

it really should work. Yeah.

Optimizations of core protocol engine

Python Xlib is now at least 25% faster after the core of the protocol

engine has been rewritten. This is some quite cute code: tailor-made

methods are generated for all structures, resulting in a 650% speed-up

in generating binary data, and a 75% speed-up in parsing binary data.

Interested Python hackers are recommended to take a look at the Struct

class in `Xlib/protocol/rq.py`.

Version 0.6 - 29 Dec 2000

Fix to make python-xlib work on 64-bytes architectures.

The struct and array modules uses `sizeof(long)` to determine the number

of bytes used when representing the type code 'l'. On Intel and VAX,

this is 32 bits as expected. On Alpha, it's 64 bits. python-xlib now

probes how large each type code is to avoid this problem.

Version 0.5 - 28 Dec 2000

- Functions implemented to get and set all ICCCM WM properties on Window

objects.

- Keymap cache implemented, with external `Xlib.display.Display` methods

`keycode_to_keysym`, `keysym_to_keycode`, `keysym_to_keycodes` and

`refresh_keyboard_mapping`.

- Two utils for debugging X traffic implemented. `utils/tcpbug.py`

forwards a TCP connection and outputs the communication between the

client and the server. This output can then be fed into

`utils/parsexbug.py`, which will output all requests, responses,

errors and events in a readable format.

Version 0.4 - 4 Oct 2000

- Thread support completed, but not really stress-tested yet.

- A framework for handling different platforms has been implemented,

together with generic Unix code and some simple VMS code.

- Some documentation has been written.

- The usual bunch of bugfixes.