xobl

The X11 OCaml Bindings Library. A Pure OCaml implementation of the X11 protocol.

TODO

• Tweaks to HIR
  • [ ] GetProperty reply: remove value_len. It's left in because the length field is calculated using both value_len and format.
  • [ ] prune unused enums and masks after converting them to variants and optional fields.
  • [ ] fix QueryTextExtents
    • there is a field that depends on the length of the whole request(!) so we should probably handle it.
• Bindings
  • [ ] come up with a better API for sending multiple requests at once.
    • how do we encode stuff which needs a reply?
  • [ ] events/variant structs/errors that are only made of one field should be converted to that one field.
    • notify_variant
• OCaml backend
  • [ ] encode/decode events and errors.
  • [ ] change handling of flags?

Documentation

• https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/
• https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/
• Many of the reasons behind decisions in the XCB protocol spec were documented in the commit messages on https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xcb/proto/log/

Other implementations generated from the spec

• Guile: guile-xcb
• Emacs Lisp: xelb
• Haskell: XHB (parser)
• Elixir: XEB
• Javascript (Node): node-x11
• Clojure: xcljb
• Rust: rust-xcb, x11rb
• Ruby: alembic
• Go: xgb

Xlib implementations (not generated) of note

• Python: python-xlib
• Common Lisp: CLX

Further reading/watching

• The real story behind Wayland and X (Daniel Stone)