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