Distributed Multihead X design

Kevin E. Martin, David H. Dawes, and Rickard E. Faith

29 June 2004 (created 25 July 2001)

This document covers the motivation, background, design, and implementation of the distributed multihead X (DMX) system. It is a living document and describes the current design and implementation details of the DMX system. As the project progresses, this document will be continually updated to reflect the changes in the code and/or design. Copyright 2001 by VA Linux Systems, Inc., Fremont, California. Copyright 2001-2004 by Red Hat, Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina

1. Introduction

1.1. The Distributed Multihead X Server
1.2. Layout of Paper

2. Development plan

2.1. Bootstrap code
2.2. Input device handling
2.3. Output device handling
2.4. Optimizing DMX
2.5. DMX X extension support
2.6. Common X extension support
2.7. OpenGL support

3. Current issues

3.1. Fonts
3.2. Zero width rendering primitives
3.3. Output scaling
3.4. Per-screen colormaps

4. Background

4.1. Core input device handling
4.2. Output handling
4.3. Xinerama

5. Development Results

5.1. Phase I
5.2. Phase II
5.3. Phase III
5.4. Phase IV