6 Glossary

Address Space

the set of objects or memory locations accessible through a single name space. In other words, it is a data region that one or more processes may share through pointers.

Client

an X client. An application communicates to a server by some path. The application program is referred to as a client of the window system server. To the server, the client is the communication path itself. A program with multiple connections is viewed as multiple clients to the server. The resource lifetimes are controlled by the connection lifetimes, not the application program lifetimes.

Connection

a bidirectional byte stream that carries the X (and GLX) protocol between the client and the server. A client typically has only one connection to a server.

(Rendering) Context

a OpenGL rendering context. This is a virtual OpenGL machine. All OpenGL rendering is done with respect to a context. The state maintained by one rendering context is not affected by another except in case of shared display lists.

GLXContext

an X ID. A client refers to an OpenGL rendering context by using this uniquely assigned value. This ID, as with all X IDs, is shareable between clients.

Similar

a potential correspondence among GLXDrawables and rendering contexts. Windows and GLXPixmaps are similar to a rendering context are similar if, and only if, they have been created with respect to the same VisualID and root window.

Thread

one of a group of processes all sharing the same address space. Typically, each thread will have its own program counter and stack pointer, but the text and data spaces are visible to each of the threads. A thread that is the only member of its group is equivalent to a process.