Plan 9 had this all sorted out, didn't it? It didn't use X11, it used something called 8½ which became the Plan 9 display server, and used 9p as the communicat

Plan 9 had this all sorted out, didn't it? It didn't use X11, it used something called 8½ which became the Plan 9 display server, and used 9p as the communication protocol. What was clever about it was that each window got its own view of the keyboard and mouse. Literally their own virtual devices in /dev. Each window only saw what went on when that window was in focus, and for the mouse, it only saw what the mouse was doing when the mouse was within the boundaries of the window and that window was directly under the cursor (no windows between the cursor and the window in question.) 9P isn't encrypted, so these remote sessions weren't encrypted, but the Bell Labs folks knew that X11 security wasn't good and seem to have evolved it well. I wonder what things would be like if we didn't latch onto 40 year old operating systems like our lives depended on them. If we can't get a useful Plan9 going (one that has a web browser and to which applications can easily be ported) maybe we can bring X11 forward a bit with inspiration from Plan 9. Wayland has been "2 years away" for about 15 years, and that shows no signs of changing. I'm told that the entire source code for Plan 9 can be held in the mind of a single person, and that any skilled C developer can read what's going on with ease. I don't know if that's true, but if such a display server has semi-obvious improvements over X11, maybe we can come up with an X12 which adopts these improvements. We do not need to maintain backwards compatibility, we only need to support X11 and X12 at the same time, I imagine.