Xref: utzoo comp.windows.news:588 comp.windows.x:4156
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!lll-tis!aftac.tis.llnl.gov!carlson
From: carlson@aftac.tis.llnl.gov (John Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: is news loosing the battle?
Message-ID: <22301@tis.llnl.gov>
Date: 7 Jul 88 10:04:12 GMT
References:  <10250002@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> <17063@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <23656@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Sender: news@tis.llnl.gov
Reply-To: carlson@aftac.tis.llnl.gov (John Carlson)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 62

In article <23656@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
>I am very sensitive to the "imaging model" issue. One of the first
>things anyone attempting to write a toolbox in X runs into (at least
>any honest person) is the whole issue of pixel sizes and relative
>metrics, particularly with fonts, big problem with X, claims of
>"portability" seem to slip away when they can't even abstract the bit
>density of the screen away from the programmer (reminiscent of the old
>IBM/JCL decks I've had to debug, "no no no, you can't specify 8000
>bytes/track on a 3330 you fool!!!")

Ideally I could scroll my display around a large root window.
Call it a virtual windowing system (swap and page rectangles?).
Also, I may want to zoom in on a particular window, if it is a
graphics display, or if the text is too small to read.

>Why couldn't the whole remote interpreter thing (in re X) be
>more or less resolved by judicious use of the "rsh" command?
>Aren't window handles global? So why not something like:
>
>	sprintf(buf,"rsh %s Xfrob -wid 0x%x", HOST, WINDOWID);
>	system(buf);
>
>Sure, that's a little slow because you have to authenticate on each
>command but opening a socket to a remote shell or using something like
>rexec/rexd/rpc directly could solve that (you get the idea.)

Using rsh in a window system is like using rcp in a file system.
We should be able to share windows between servers (hosts).
What I type in a window on my display/screen will appear in the
same window on your display/screen without the application knowing!  I
would like to move a window from my display/screen to your display/screen
with my window manager assuming permissions are OK.
					[ I think HP did something like this
						with X11 ]

>Similarly one could easily imagine opening a socket to a lisp which
>has CLX (Common Lisp X) pre-loaded and passing lisp structs much as
>above (I know, all together, "lisp is a memory pig", is postscript
>lightweight on memory? is this still a critical issue to most people?
>actually lisp doesn't have to be that much of a memory pig, that's an
>old wives tale borne mostly of non-paged 64KB/256KW machines.)

I would prefer some kind of interpreter.  Take your choice between
X10, X11, Lisp, PostScript, NeWS, ANSI C, Smalltalk, or next year's
language.

Also, I should be able to mount local window hierarchies and EXISTING
remote window hierarchies on my root window wherever I like.
			[ Some of this can be done under NeWS and X11 ]

>My prediction? (hmm, maybe shoulda included comp.society.futures)
>
>That something else will come along in the next coupla years making
>both X and NeWS obsolete, if I knew what it was I'd go ahead and
>implement it, make a coupla billion and leave the rest of y'all in the
>dust :-)

Drop a few million my way.  I won't mind.

"These aren't my ideas, they are old ideas rehashed."

John Carlson