Writing tailorable software: The X11 sample server

Abstract

Designers of portable software often trade speed for generality. Production software, on the other hand, must usually be tailored to the specific hardware to achieve performance goals. The X11 sample server is an implementation of the X Window System protocol. By providing the procedure hooks to tailor code, it allows implementors to decide this trade‐off themselves. This article discusses the programming techniques used to achieve portability in the sample server.