Unsanctioned patches for Leopard's X11 now available

If you've been running into trouble with the X11 infrastructure in Leopard, you aren't alone; issues including multi-monitor support problems and crashes in bunches have been frustrating those who depend on the MIT-originated tools (apps such as The GIMP, OpenOffice and Sun's Tarantella/Global Desktop are X11-based). The X11 code in Tiger was forked from the older XFree86 project, while Leopard's X11 is based on the x.org 'reboot' of the windowing system — while newer and potentially better in the long run, the x.org code apparently still has some rough edges.

Thanks to the efforts of Apple's point guy for XDarwin, Ben Byer, many of these bugs have now been squashed in an unofficial, unsupported new build of the Xquartz library. Installing the revised components is not for the casual user (you will have to compile it from source for now) but if you spend a lot of time in X11, you might well appreciate the changes. There's plenty more on the X11/Leopard saga at MacOSXHints' forums and on the Apple X11 mailing list.

By the way, the dashing fellow on the right there in the red cap? That's Hexley, Jon Hooper's platypus mascot for Darwin. Perhaps that's the new X11 build he's unpacking.

Update: Thanks to our commenters for the links to the precompiled binaries and the 3-step Macports installation process.

Thanks, Vincent.