[TUHS] X and NeWS history (long)
Grant Taylor
gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net
Wed Sep 13 12:43:21 AEST 2017
On 09/12/2017 06:56 PM, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> Wow, big topic. Rather than getting into it in detail at the moment I'm curious
> as to why you think that it's important for it to work over a network.
I personally really like the ability to SSH to a machine (*) using -XY
and run Oracle's installer such that it's display shows up on my notebook.
I find that SO MUCH EASIER than trying to get the iDRAC / RSA / IMM /
etc to work. Usually they require multiple ports and protocols (often
UDP, which is a pain through SSH).
For me, X11 forwarding just works. - Thank you to everyone that spent
so much time and energy getting it to work.
> Before you bite my head off for that question, I'm not suggesting that there's
> no value in taking data from somewhere on a network and using it on a local
> machine.
I think there's a distinct and large difference in data and display I/O.
> Back in the darker ages of the Green Flash (Tektronix storage tubes like the
> 4014) it was common to display remote data on a local system. The data in
> those days arrived via RS-232. Depending on the application, one could shovel
> 4014 commands over the wire or just raw data and use a local program to generate
> drawing commands.
I've often contemplated SIXEL graphics in an error prompt from remote
systems. (This is a different topic, which itself relies on answer back.)
> I've never been convinced that the way that X did it made sense. Sure, you'd
> here people say things like "your remote Cray can draw stuff on your local
> screen." But it wasn't just that; using X your Cray also had to draw and
> manage your user interface: scroll bars, buttons, and so on unless you wanted
> to create a separate protocol so that you could run your user interface
> locally and have it communicate with the remote application. Of course, X was
> enough of a pig that maybe using a Cray to drive a scroll bar made sense :-)
Maybe I'm a n00b and don't know better, but I'd think that would be a
use case for nested X running on a local (closer than the Cray) machine.
So all the Cray needed to do was to send program I/O to the (nested) X
server. Then the (nested) X server could handle scroll bars and other
local window manager eye candy.
I think the Cray would run something much like X does if you aren't
running a window manager. Simple, single application, no frills.
I think.
> So before getting off into graphics APIs I think that it would be interesting
> to hash this out.
>
> BTW, one of the best things about NeWS was the fact that with a reasonable set
> of conventions the user interface personality could live in the server and be
> applied to all applications. Contrast that with X where each application links
> in a UI library, and if your screen looks anything like mine there isn't a lot
> of consistency because different applications use different libraries.
>
> One of the problems with NeWS was that this was so much fun to play with that
> the people doing the work kept on coming up with new ideas faster than they
> could implement the old ones so there was difficulty completing toolkit
> projects.
LOL
Feeping Creatureism?
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
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