I discussed compiling XFree86 from source in my article XFree86 4.1.0 from Source. One problem if you nuke all associated RPMs, is that the Athena Widget Set is included in the XFree86 distribution. This is in xc/lib/Xaw of the XFree86 source tree. What is a Widget Set? Well, this is the style of buttons and controls. In this case this is mostly for older X applications. Apps based on Gnome use the Gimp Toolkit, and those based on KDE use QT. Xaw3d is a prettier widget set that can replace Xaw. If you want to use Xaw3d, and want to compile from source, you will have some problems. When you install most distributions, they hack the source for Xaw3d on the fly. If you ever try and complile Xaw3d from source, it won’t work. The folks on the venerable project LinuxFromScratch discuss this: Xaw3d. If you search around the Internet, there are many, many questions about how to solve this. I extracted XFree86 sources in /usr/local/src. I wrote up a shell script that I used to extract, compile, and install Xaw3d correctly on my system:
compilexaw3d.txt.

One program that can use Xaw3d, as well as XPM is XFig, which is one of my favorite drawing programs for Linux. If you want to use the default settings for XFig (and probably other programs) when you compile, make a symbolic link: /usr/include/X11 -> /usr/X11R6/include/X11. To make it run pretty, add the line in ~/.Xdefaults: *customization: -color

[Ed. Note: I put up a screenshot of XFig 3.2.4 all prettied up here.]