X11 marks the spots on the Leopard

The problems described here were solved by the open source community by mid-February 2008. Apple still shouldn’t have rolled out Leopard without addressing them.

A new year, a new operating system. I upgraded a MacBook in the family to Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) from Tiger (10.4). Another hassle-free Mac upgrade?

Luckily, the MacBook’s user is not addicted to X11, Apple’s take on the X windowing system. I am. Three of my ten favourite apps run under X11. And Leopard pretty much broke it (see this FAQ).

I understand that this has happened because of a move to the X.org codebase which will eventually bring benefits, and Apple does not control X.org, and so on. But for me, it was a selling point that “X11 for Mac OS X is compatible, fast, and fully integrated with Mac OS X,” and I think it is cavalier of Apple to continue to brag about it as things stand.

X11 has got better again, after initial dismal reports at the Leopard launch, but is still not well. For example, I still cannot switch keyboards in the international menu (the point of being “fully integrated with Mac OS X”). Some people may think this is a low-priority issue, but I switch between 2–4 keyboards a zillion times on a typical working day.

I installed the new 2.1.1 version of X11 from the XQuartz project, but the bug was still there. But apparently some kind soul has fixed it, and it is supposed to work in 2.1.2 when that comes along.