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