Summary of new features in 4.3.0.

Release Notes for XFree86[tm] 4.3.0 : Summary of new features in 4.3.0.
Previous: Introduction to the 4.x Release Series
Next: Drivers

## 2. Summary of new features in 4.3.0.

### 2.1. Video Driver Enhancements

- ATI Radeon 9x00 2D support added, and 3D support added for the Radeon 8500, 9000, 9100, and M9. The 3D support for the Radeon now includes hardware TCL.
- Support added to the i810 driver for Intel 845G, 852GM, 855GM and 865G integrated graphics chipsets, including 2D, 3D (DRI) and XVideo. Support for the 830M has been improved, and XVideo support added.
- National Semiconductor SC1x00, GX1, and GX2 chipset support added with the "nsc" driver.
- Support added for the NVIDIA nForce2 integrated graphics, GeForce 4, and GeForce FX.
- Major SiS driver updates for some of the latest chipsets. Unfortunately the SiS 3D driver has had to be disabled because no one has yet taken up the challenge to port it to Mesa 4.x.
- The s3virge driver now has support for double scan modes on the DX (with XVideo disabled).
- Updates to the savage driver, including fixing problems with the TwisterK, and problems with incorrect memory size detection.
- 2D acceleration added for the Trident CyberBladeXP/Ai1 chipsets.
- Support for big endian architectures has been added to the C&T driver.
- Various updates and bug fixes have been made to most other drivers.

### 2.2. Input Driver Enhancements

- The mouse driver now has automatic protocol detection for PS/2 mice.
- Several new input drivers have been added, including tek4957, jamstudio (js_x), fpit, palmax, and ur98 (Linux only).

### 2.3. X Server and Extension Updates

- Support for the RandR extension has been partially integrated into the XFree86 server, providing support for resizing the root window at run-time.
- The Mesa version used for OpenGL® 1.3 and DRI driver support has been updated to 4.0.4.
- The XFree86 server's hot keys (including those for switching modes and virtual terminals) can now be configured via XKB. Previously they were hard coded. An X server configuration option has been added to allow the VT switching hot keys to be disabled.

### 2.4. Client and Library Updates

- An Xcursor library providing support for alpha blended (ARGB) and animated cursors. Two Xcursor themes are provided (redglass and whiteglass), as well as the default "core" theme (the traditional cursors).
- Xterm updated to patch level 173, including the following bugfixes:
  - Fix two infinite loops (special cases of mouse hilite tracking, DECUDK parsing).
  - Make repainting of the 256-color example work properly.
  - Modify parser tables to improve detection of malformed control sequences, making xterm behave more like a real DEC terminal.
  - Fix a problem with the blinking cursor which occasionally caused xterm to pause until a key was pressed.
  - Fix improper parsing of multiple items in the ttyModes resource.
  and the following improvements:
  - Modify xterm to invoke luit.
  - Add simple session management client capabilities.
  - Add a modifyCursorKeys resource to control how the shift- and similar modifiers are used to make a cursor escape sequence.
  - Check if the printerCommand resource string is empty, and use this to allow the user to disable printer function.
  - Sort the options list which is displayed in help- and syntax-messages at runtime to simplify maintenance.

### 2.5. I18N and Font Updates

- FreeType2 updated to version 2.1.1.
- The "freetype" X server font backend has undergone a partial rewrite. The new version is based on FreeType 2, and handles TrueType (including OpenType/TTF), OpenType/CFF and Type 1 fonts. The old "type1" backend is now deprecated, and is only used for CIDFonts by default.
- A new utility called "mkfontscale", which builds fonts.scale files, has been added.
- The Xft library has undergone a major restructuring, and is now split into fontconfig (which deals with font discovery and configuration and is independent from X), and Xft itself (which uses fontconfig and deals with font rasterisation and rendering. The format of the Xft font configuration files has changed in an incompatible manner.
- Support has been added to the Xft library to do rendering with the core X11 protocol. This allows clients using this library to render to X servers that don't have support for the RENDER extension.
- There has been a significant reworking of the XKB support to allow multi-layout configurations. Multi-layout configurations provide a flexible way of supporting multiple language layouts and switching between them.

### 2.6. OS Support Updates

- Updates for Darwin/Mac OS X, including:
  - Indirect GLX acceleration added.
  - Smaller memory footprint and faster 2-D drawing in rootless mode.
  - Full screen mode now uses shadowfb for much faster 2-D drawing.
  - Native fonts can be used on MacOS X.
- Various Cygwin support updates, including an experimental rootless X server for Cygwin/XFree86.
- AMD x86-64 support (primarily for Linux so far) has been added.
- Support added for OpenBSD/sparc64.
- Major OS/2 support updates.
- Major SCO OpenServer updates.
- Multi-head support has been added for 460GX-based Itanium systems, and for ZX1-based Itanium2 systems.
- Experimental support for SunOS/Solaris on UltraSPARC systems.

A more complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGELOG that is part of the XFree86 source tree. It can also be viewed online at our CVSweb server.

Release Notes for XFree86[tm] 4.3.0 : Summary of new features in 4.3.0.
Previous: Introduction to the 4.x Release Series
Next: Drivers