It’s the end of the X Window System as we know it. X Window 11 Version 6.1, due next quarter, will be the final X11 release, reports today’s issue of our sister paper Unigram.X. Like the rest of the industry, the X Consortium is taking itself off to the World Wide Web, preparing a new family of products and technologies called Broadway it claims will run any X Window application anywhere on the Internet. The not-for-profit organisation says Broadway – slated for beta tests in May and shipment in August – will enable users to invoke programs on remote Unix or Windows NT servers from their Unix, X terminal, Windows or Mac Web browsers. The X Consortium envisages PC/Mac X Server vendors upgrading their current products to support Broadway application servers running on Unix systems in conjunction with the most widely-used Web browsers. Broadway is also expected to work with the half dozen-odd mechanisms now on (or nearing) the market that enable Unix with X Window desktops to display Windows desktops and applications served from NT installations. Broadway incorporates what’s said to be a new high-performance version of the X protocol designed for use on the Internet, an enhanced security mechanism plus an all-new audio system. It will be backwards-compatible with X11 releases, though users will have to upgrade their X servers to Broadway technology to take advantage of the new Web functionality. The key difference between Broadway and something like Sun Microsystems Inc’s Java language is that no code is actually downloaded on to the browser. Nevertheless, X Consortium claims remotely-invoked applications will run at native-like performance. It’s complementary to Java, the organisation says, a user could have a Java window and Broadway window on their browser. The X Consortium believes that Broadway and Java could even be merged further down the track. Broadway can also be used to create applications for conventional X11 environments – X11 effectively becomes a component of Broadway. The X Consortium expects to be asked to create a Broadway-enabled version of the X11.6-based Common Desktop Environment further down the line. Although Broadway is currently a code-name, the group has apparently had so much positive feedback that it is already using the name as an X Consortium trade mark and expects the name to carry over into product releases. The X Consortium has a dozen developers working on it and believes a key commercial attraction will be the ability for users to try the likes of Windows95 games and packages remotely before buying them. Described as an alternative to the static HTML, Broadway produces a Common Gateway Interface-compliant component to run under the browser.
