Re: [xougen] Re: xouvert-general Digest, Vol 1, Issue 13

[>> G-LiTe /]

David Ross wrote:

> This might be a dumb idea, but what about having the server look locally
> for required libraries before going to the client?  Does that make any
> sense?
>
> David
>  
I wouldn't know exactly about that. You could write an extension that
dynamically links to the libraries and just receives function calls over
the network to execute them. Sounds sortof like RPC. If we did that we'd
need some serious restrictions on the extension for security reasons.
On top of that, clients may not know exactly what the window looks like at
some point and you still have to send an event every time the mouse hovers
over or clicks a button.
Let's see what else I can think of ;) ... the library itself would have to
support the extension and check the version of it on the server too. All
necessary functions in the library should be wrapped to the server. There
should be some extra functionality in the extension to get a bitmap of an
area so clients know how to, for example, invert certain parts of the
window, which is required for selections and the likes.
Libraries like gtk (actually glib) have an event loop alot of applications
use to implement their own events too. The extension should be able to send
function calls back. How are we going to get the pointers across anyways?
Suppose, in the case of gtk, it'd have to take care of some sort of
identifier.

It all sounds a bit hackish to me. It was an okay idea but it has it's
drawbacks. In my opinion, having the toolkit run server side really doesn't
have that many advantages. Does the bandwidth usage really matter that much
over a local socket or LAN? I can't really imagine anything working smooth
over a WAN and if people want to use it, I'd suggest just using vnc and
allow the application to read required information over a socket from the
computer it was actually suppose to run on.

Keep the ideas coming though. It's not really me who has to decide about
this, I'm just giving comments. And I'm not here to decline everything. ;)

--
> > G-LiTe /
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