Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!mit-eddie!jbs@eddie.MIT.EDU
From: jbs@eddie.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Input Line Editing
Message-ID: <9680@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: 14 Jul 88 20:16:28 GMT
References: <16456@brl-adm.ARPA> <9666@eddie.MIT.EDU> <59697@sun.uucp>
Sender: uucp@eddie.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: jbs@eddie.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal)
Organization: MIT EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 28
Cc: nessus@wonko.mit.edu

In article <59697@sun.uucp> guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes
(quoting an article by Doug Alan):

>> There should also be a version of X that runs [...] on a normal, 
>> dumb terminal.
>One of the "most basic features" of X11 is the ability to draw things such as
>lines, and curves, and so on and so forth, with pixel-level resolution.  I
>would be very surprised to hear about *ANY* X11 client that could live with the
>minimum set of X11 requests that could be implemented on a "dumb
>terminal"

Consider an 80x24 terminal with a 256 character font.

If this is viewed as an 80x24 bitmapped display with 8 bits per pixel,
it should be possible to run X on it.  To make such a thing useful,
you need the server to process fonts as pixmaps (I don't know if there
are any servers that currently do this--it would be also be useful for
anti-aliased fonts on a normal workstation).  The font size would be 1
pixel by 1 pixel.  VT100's, which have double-width and double-width,
double-height fonts would have 2 by 1 and 2 by 2 fonts as well.

The lack of a pointer is another problem that can be dealt with in a
variety of creative ways.

What is wrong with this scheme?  Please omit reasons like "You
wouldn't want to do that because character-based terminals are
worthless," etc.

Jeff Siegal