Xl1200 as x server

[khs@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Kenneth H. Sinclair)]

    Date: Thu, 2 Aug 90 12:14:16 PDT
    From: felix@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM (Felix Ingrand)

    Bruce R. Miller writes:
    >    Date: Thu, 2 Aug 90 10:06 EDT
    >    From: SWM@SAPSUCKER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Scott McKay)
    >
    >	Date: Mon, 30 Jul 90 12:20:37 EDT
    >	From: bart@nynexst.com (Bart Burns)
    >
    >	We are interested in running Genera applications via x windows on
    >	hostile platforms, using xl1200s as "Genera servers" .  Anybody out
    >	ther doing this?
    >
    >    We were showing exactly this capability at AAAI, in the form of a
    >    SPARCstation 1 networked to a MacIvory using X.  It was surprisingly
    >    usable, much better than I would have thought.  When we connected to
    >    the XL1200, it was about as good as a local console (except for the
    >    Sun keyboard, of course :-).
    >
    >Just how does  this work  (for the  X naive)?   

    You just make a:
    xhost +name-of-your-lispm
    and a:
    rsh name-of-your-lispm start X screen name-of-the-X-server
    et voila, you have a Lisp machine console on your X server.

    >Can you  run pretty much
    >anything on the  lispm?

    I have been able to run everything except Zmail. (but keep in mind that only
    one user is login at the same time on the X client (or Genera server))

    > Or  does it  have to  be rewritten  for X  (like
    >applications running  on  hostile  platforms)? 

    Everything "cleanly" written works without any problem. If you use
    dw:define-program-framework, your stuff will probably work right away. 

Everything should work, clean or not, except for programs which use
special features provided by the Color system for our dedicated color
framebuffers.  Zmail works fine, I used it this way for the better part
of a year; the only problem is that you can't have more than one Zmail
running at once (on either one or more consoles) because it uses global
variables to maintain state.  Some applications might have performance
problems due to excessive transmission of bitmaps between the client and
server, which can usually be fixed using the facilities described in the
section "Using Off Screen Bitmaps".

If anything doesn't work over the X client, it's a bug.  Report it now
so we can fix it in 8.1.  We'd also be interested to hear about
compatibility problems (or successes) with other X servers; we do most
of our testing with MIT and Sun servers, though we have tried a number
of other workstation, PC, and X terminal servers.