XQuartz 2.8.0 | Hacker News Reader

XQuartz 2.8.0

xquartz.org

81 pointsjboekesteijn15 comments

Note: The maintainer of XQuartz has been looking for help for a long time but the story is buried in an issue comment.

https://github.com/XQuartz/XQuartz/issues/91#issuecomment-80...

Seems unlikely anyone will ever step in here. X11 is dead now. Even X11 on Linux has no contributors

Not dead for me. I use it for headless cloud image and video processing all the time. Long live xv!

X11 is mostly finished. There’s still active development ongoing for eg. the hardened version of Xorg Xenocara (by OpenBSD, also used by Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre), and the suckless mobile UI sxmo (last commit 18 hours ago https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/).

Edit: also it’s fairly ironic you’re calling it dead on HN. Official Arc (the language HN’s written in) hasn’t been updated in about 12 years IIUC. xorg-server was updated last December https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-announce/2020-December/003....

If curious, past threads:

New Xquartz release with native Apple Silicon support - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25967442 - Jan 2021 (41 comments)

Apple Removes X11 in OS X Mountain Lion, Shifts Support to Open Source XQuartz - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3606970 - Feb 2012 (46 comments)

When editing LaTex, I have Vim and Zathura open at the same time, and whenever I save, Make runs which automatically generates the PDF, and Zathura picks up the changes.

That is on standard *nix systems.

I tried but could not reproduce this flow on macOS, since the default PDF viewer, Preview, does not pickup file changes without having to manually focus the window. And when it does reload the file, it insists on always showing a thumbnail overview. Very frustrating.

Aside from Preview there seems to be a mess of other free-ware PDF viewers on macOS, but nothing simple and open source.

Luckily with XQuartz I was able to run Zathura on macOS and continue with my workflow. So thanks, XQuartz!

Well, Zathura is available on macOS from brew, so...

https://github.com/zegervdv/homebrew-zathura

Oh yes, I also forgot to mention I was using macports :)

Zathura, being a GTK application, most likely doesn't need XQuartz if it's built correctly.

I'd also like to add that for the workflow you're describing, Skim would also be a great choice. It's a fully open source native mac application that has SyncTex support.

https://skim-app.sourceforge.io/

Which apps still require XQuartz? I saw it being required by GIMP and Inkscape many many years ago, but GTK has added direct Quartz support, hasn't it?

https://wiki.winehq.org/MacOS still has it listed as a prerequisite

I use it for x forwarding through ssh. That lets me use graphical linux programs without needing to run a whole desktop environment inside my linux vm.

Nice to see a new release. The first since 2016.

The advantages of Apple Silicon even if you are still on Intel...

Came here to post this but you beat me to it!

They really had to this time for M1 support. However I do wonder how many bugs have been left unfixed during those 5 years.

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