X Server 1.12 gets multi-touch support

The X.org developers have released version 1.12.0 of X Server. The update adds support for multi-touch, allowing it to recognise and manage input from multiple fingers on touch screens and touchpads; the feature has been implemented using inputproto 2.2 (X Input Protocol extension), which Peter Hutterer released earlier this month. In his announcement, the lead developer of X Server's multi-touch support refers to four blog postings in which he discusses the details of the implementation's functionality and characteristics (1, 2, 3, 4). GTK+ maintainer Matthias Clasen announced that, a few days ago, the code to support the new multi-touch infrastructure was incorporated into a pre-release version of GTK+ 3.4, which is due to be finalised in April; Qt has offered multi-touch support for some time and will soon also be able to access the new X Server's features.

The new version of X Server also has a range of bug fixes and minor improvements. The developers are thinking about releasing a new version of X.org, X11R7.7, complete with the new X Server and appropriate drivers, libraries etc, in the first half of this year. The X.org bundles are no longer as relevant as they used to be because most Linux distributions now package their own combinations of X.org components.

Fedora 17, which is due to be released in May, is among the distributions that plan to implement X Server 1.12; Canonical's upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS release is planning to use a version of X Server 1.11 into which the developers have incorporated the multi-touch support of 1.12. AMD's proprietary graphics driver doesn't work with X Server 1.12 at present; the documentation of the current version of NVIDIA's proprietary graphics driver, on the other hand, states that the driver is compatible with X Server 1.12.

(crve)