Re: Xl1200 as x server

[TYSON@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM (Mabry Tyson)]

    Date: Thu, 2 Aug 90 19:26 EDT
    From: barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)
	...

    Most of the X functionality is spliced in at a level that even wizards
    (except the ones who had to redesign it so that this would all work)
    rarely play with (the only time I played at this level was to implement
    key-click, and it doesn't work in Genera 8.0).  It's at the screen and
    console level, not the window level (the virtual console is a single X
    window, with Genera managing the windows inside it), so none of those
    funky window mixins are affected by it.  DW is completely unaffected as
    well, because it doesn't exist at this level.

    The set of operations one can do on a screen or console is much smaller
    than the operations that can be done on a window, and they map pretty
    straightforwardly onto the X protocol.  It's basically just drawing
    lines and shapes, filling regions, drawing characters, and accepting
    keyboard and mouse input.

Gee, does this mean that I can grab the bitmap of the window and
manipulate it (in a reasonable amount of time)?  I think not.  That's
something we did quite easily up until 7.4 ECO 3 or so.  That didn't require
much wizardry.

    An analogy from a more common communication environment is ASCII
    terminals.  Going from an ordinary Lispm console to an X terminal is
    like going from a hardwired terminal to one connected by a modem.
    Programs that just send and receive ASCII don't care what kind of wire
    it goes over.

I will point out that modems (like X) doesn't have the bandwidth that
hardwired lines (or non-X, non-embedded window systems) have.  That's why
some things can't be done that way.  Response time is too slow.

						    barmar