*BSD News Article 12336


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!crcnis1.unl.edu!wupost!darwin.sura.net!sgiblab!pacbell.com!att-out!cbnewsj!dwex
From: dwex@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (david.e.wexelblat)
Subject: Re: SOLUTION: X over serial line
Organization: AT&T
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1993 05:07:23 GMT
Message-ID: <1993Mar6.050723.23612@cbnewsj.cb.att.com>
References: <1993Feb28.171424.19703@netcom.com> <1993Mar5.130733.7065@hemlock.cray.com>
Lines: 38

In article <1993Mar5.130733.7065@hemlock.cray.com> overby@cray.com (Glen Overby) writes:
> How about NCD's Xremote protocol?  There was a man page and some
> binaries for it in X11R4; someone told me the entire protocol has been
> contributed to the X consortium, but I haven't found it yet.
> 
> The NCD manual describes Xremote as a 3-layer protocol.  The lower
> layer is PPP-like, I think the second layer does (essentially) virtual
> circuts and the top layer is the X11 protocol (this is from memory;
> the manual is at home).  Your server address is the Xremote server machine
> the remote (on-the-network) side.
> 
> Glen Overby

There's a big difference between "contributed to the X Consortium" and
"available to the rest of us".  There are a lot of things that X Consortium
members have access to that are not made available to the public between
releases.  There's nothing wrong with that; that's what X Consortium
members get for the money they provide.

In X11R6, there will be Low Bandwidth X.  This is derived from NCD's
Xremote.  It will do everthing Xremoted does now, and enhance it with
host-side caching to cut down on the amount of round-trip data that has
to be sent over the serial line.

I've looked at enhancing 'term' to add the protocol-level compression.
'term' already implements functional equivalents for the lower two
layers of Xremote.  I've decided that it would be a waste of effort, 
given what's coming in X11R6, and the current ball-park schedules 
I've heard.  There's a lot of other stuff to do with XFree86 in the
meantime.


--
David Wexelblat <dwex@mtgzfs3.att.com>  (908) 957-5871
AT&T Bell Laboratories, 200 Laurel Ave - 3F-428, Middletown, NJ  07748

"In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky.  They stand there."
	-- Yes, Roundabout