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