Only since Qt5 I started seeing some programs not sending raw X acceleration commands; that's way latter than "the early 2000s", and they can still be configure

Only since Qt5 I started seeing some programs not sending raw X acceleration commands; that's way latter than "the early 2000s", and they can still be configured to render using X. With few glaring exceptions (browsers, games, etc.) most programs still issue X rendering commands, even if they don't use font stuff. But the point is that it's still much faster to send vector drawing commands over the wire. Programs/toolkits no longer caring to do so is a problem which we paper over by finding efficient ways to compress bitmaps (like h264), but almost by definition you cannot ever surpass the benefits of vector graphics.