X VNC History

The important changes in each version are summarised here; see the source package for more details.

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Changes in version 3.3.3R2

vncconnect

• New helper program for Xvnc, which causes it to make reverse connections to a listening VNC viewer. This is similar to WinVNC's "Add New Client" / -connect feature.

Xvnc

• New option -inetd incorporating Andre Moreira's iXvnc functionality.
• Fix to hextile encoding, thanks to Michael A. Fetterman - this may be the cause of the "0 bpp problem".
• New connect out feature by using the vncconnect command.
• Fix some non-ascii capitalisation issues, thanks to Vlad Harchev.
• Fix bounding box calculation for arcs.
• Other minor bug fixes.

vncserver

• Sets DISPLAY to use unix domain socket if possible (:dpynum rather than host:dpynum).
• Option -kill should now work if you give it $DISPLAY as an argument.

vncviewer

• Fix Xaw string copy bug, thanks to Tim Waugh - this fixes the problems with the password dialog with recent versions of linux

Java viewer

• Improve keyboard handling for Latin-1 characters and ctrl-_.
• Change constants so (hopefully) will compile with JDK 1.3

Release date: 26 October 2000

Changes in version 3.3.3R1

Xvnc

• Xvnc now uses a "deferred update" mechanism which enhances performance in many cases. After any change to the framebuffer, Xvnc waits for a time (default 40ms) before sending an update to any waiting clients. This means that more changes tend to get coalesced together in a single update. The time can be changed with the -deferupdate option. Setting it to 0 results in the same behaviour as previous versions of Xvnc.
• There are a couple of security enhancements. The -localhost option now causes Xvnc to only listen on the loopback interface. This means that it shouldn't be vulnerable to port scanning. Also a "too many tries" feature on authentication failure is now implemented. After five failed attempts, further attempts are delayed by an exponentially increasing amount, starting at ten seconds.

vncserver

• Uses SO_REUSEADDR when testing to see which ports are free.

vncviewer

• When given -owncmap in full screen mode, tries to install the colormap. This works only when no window manager is running.
• The popup window now always uses the default colormap.
• The "backing store" attribute can now be set on the desktop window via the "backingStore" resource. It defaults to "Always", meaning the X server should keep the contents of the viewer window when it gets obscured by other windows.

Release date: 9 February 2000

Changes in version 3.3.3

Xvnc

vncserver

vncpasswd

vncviewer

Release date: 19 August 1999

Changes in version 3.3.2 R3

Xvnc

vncserver

vncviewer

Release date: 14 December 1998

Changes in version 3.3.2 R2

Xvnc

vncserver

Release date: 23 July 1998

Changes in version 3.3.2

X vncviewer

• -viewonly, -geometry, -wmdecoration options
• Options for debugging servers: change -delay to -rawdelay, plus
• 
  -copyrectdelay, -region
• Options allowed before or after host:dpynum argument
• Handle changes to local X keyboard mapping
• Rudimentary single bit-per-pixel support (thanks to Chris Hooper)

Xvnc server

• Based on XFree86 3.3.2 distribution
• Faster pixel-format translation routines
• Improved HTTP server. Now performs substitution on any files ending in .vnc, so that default options to the VNC applet can be configured on the server side.
• -economictranslate option to use less memory-hungry translation
• Supports viewers requesting only a subregion of the screen.
• Better log file messages with timestamps.