And because the graphics primitives built into X11 are... well, primitive. The protocol was designed in the mid-1980s, at a point in time where display resoluti

And because the graphics primitives built into X11 are... well, primitive. The protocol was designed in the mid-1980s, at a point in time where display resolutions were low and color displays were usually limited to 256 colors or less. As a result, the graphics and text primitives don't support antialiased rendering or any kind of color blending -- so anything using those functions looks rather ugly and dated.