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11 revisions later, they ended up at X11, and then time stopped.

You have to remember X11 is a protocol not an api.

11 revisions in 5 years 1984 - 1989 At that point they stopped changing it. And we have enjoyed 35 years of compatibility since then. Api's come and go, in and out of fashion. But I bet you could take your brand new linux X server and still have your 30 year old sun workstation drawing windows on it.

One cool thing is old non-Linux machines like the Symbolics Lisp machine and their library descendants (CLX for Common Lisp) still basically work with modern X Servers.

Minor complication: For its user interface Symbolics Genera needs the "cursor warp" feature, since it moves the mouse cursor under UIMS control.

Noteworthy: CLX is written in Lisp and does not use Xlib (which is a C library).

Really: and then everything else was added by means of optional extensions.

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