[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
> >Do they layer on top of the X-windows environment? What is their use?
> >Is there someplace someone could direct me to learn more about this?
> Tell me about it. I still don't get it.
There is a set of layers that looks like this (usually):
Sessions
Applications
Toolkits
Xlib
....
X server
The X server is something that sits out on the net controlling a display. Its
main functions are to deal with windows and draw things in them and send user
input back to the applications(but there are a whole lot of complications
having to do with keeping network round-trips to a minimum, which helps
performance).
Xlib is on the other side (the application side) of the network connection.
Its job is mainly to turn X API calls into the wire protocol and send them to
the X server.
X Toolkits provide the basic building blocks of an application. A toolkit
usually provides interfaces to create a coherent (visually and behaviorally)
UI. This includes things like menus, workareas, dialog boxes, etc. It also
includes protocols for behavior that all applications are expected to support,
like cut-and-paste, and drag-and-drop. Examples include Qt (the KDE toolkit),
gtk (Gnome), Xt (the original X toolkit), dwt (DECWindows), ol (OpenLook).
Applications are the things that provide some kind of useful (usually)
function.
Window managers are a specialized application, but there's nothing
particularly special about them.
Sessions are a group of applications and their state. A session manager may
do things like start up a particular set of apps, and shut them all down again
after telling them to save their state.
Gnome and KDE are overarching projects which encompass a toolkit, a set of
applications, and a session manager.
Jeff
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
