Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!kimba!hvr
From: hvr%kimba@Sun.COM (Heather Rose)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: Bugs in NeWs documentation
Message-ID: <64717@sun.uucp>
Date: 18 Aug 88 01:13:55 GMT
References: <1327@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: hvr@sun.UUCP (Heather Rose)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 42

In article <1327@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> dick@ucsfccb.UUCP (Dick Karpinski) writes:
>The NeWS and the Open Look documentation is said to refer to
>the local graphics device as a window server and the distant
>applications engine as a window client.  I am fully aware 
>that this makes good sense when you understand the mechanism.
>However, I am acutely aware that novices find this confusing.

You're right.  It is confusing.  The word "server" has come to
mean many things.  Even the traditional reference to server has become
muddled now that you have an nfs server, a client server, 
a news server,  and a yp server.  And on top of that we
add the window server and compute server.  Seems to me that the word
"server" has come to mean a much broader class of items.  But in general,
it helps to think of the "server" as the one allocating resources.  The
nfs server gives/gets files to/from the requesting clients.  The client server
gives disk space via nfs to diskless clients.  The news server distributes
articles to rn clients to read.  The yp server sends and receives password 
and other networking information to the yp clients.  Then the window
server allocates realestate on the monitor to client processes and transmits
input to the clients and output from the clients to the necessary places.
The compute server takes some instructions from the client and delivers
the results after the appropriate number of CPU cycles.

In general, it helps to think of the server co-habitating with the
resources it is allocating.  The window server worries about what is
displayed on the monitor, so it would live closer to the monitor.  The
window clients do not necessarily have to do much "window stuff" at all.
For instance, say you have a complex expert system working on a mainframe.
And now you want to add a wiz-bang UI to it.  So, you get Suns to do the
UI with the NeWS server running on the Sun and handling user-input and
screen output.  Then the client of NeWS (the expert system) runs on your
mainframe (the compute server).  Then the mainframe sends information to
the Sun like (give me more data) or (here is my result).  The Sun then
takes that information to translate it into something meaningful to the
user by displaying information on the monitor.

I think the field of computer science is running out of words in many
areas.  Maybe it's time to use latin or greek like medical science has.
Then no one would know what anything meant :-)

Heather Rose
Tech. Support--Windows and Graphics