Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) (06/24/89)
Can X be used as a general-purpose IPC mechanism across a network, or is X so specifically tailored to user-interface functions that it is not well-suited towards more general IPC and client/server functions? The way I understand it, X officially supports TCP/IP and DECnet. Are there plans to support TOPS, Novell, the Microsoft LAN Manager, and Appletalk? (Did I leave out any other obvious nets?) Thanks, Will
karlton@fudge.sgi.com (Phil Karlton) (06/29/89)
In article <19833@cup.portal.com> Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) writes: >Can X be used as a general-purpose IPC mechanism across a network, or >is X so specifically tailored to user-interface functions that it is >not well-suited towards more general IPC and client/server functions? While X could be used to implement an IPC mechanism, it would not be very efficient. On page xxiii of the Digital Press _X Window System_ book, there is a paragraph that addresses this point. The last sentence is The X protocol is correctly viewed as just one component in an overall distributed system architecture, not as the complete architecture by itself. There is only one client/server function that X was intentionally designed to support. Let me encourage somebody out there to design, implement and give away an OS and transport independent RPC mechanism. You could become famous. >The way I understand it, X officially supports TCP/IP and DECnet. >Are there plans to support TOPS, Novell, the Microsoft LAN Manager, >and Appletalk? (Did I leave out any other obvious nets?) X doesn't actually support any transport mechanism; it's more the other way around. The X protocol can be built on top of any reliable byte stream. As you note, there already exist implementations on top of TCP/IP and DECnet. ChaosNet seems like an obvious example of a network that somebody should be working on. PK
swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick) (06/29/89)
Date: 24 Jun 89 01:45:13 GMT
From: imagen!atari!portal!cup.portal.com!Will@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Will
E Estes)
Can X be used as a general-purpose IPC mechanism across a network, or
is X so specifically tailored to user-interface functions that it is
not well-suited towards more general IPC and client/server functions?
Well, it _can_ be (and has been), but then you can also split firewood
with a screwdriver and hammer. The several mechanisms in X for
inter-client data exchange are not tuned for traffic that has
high bandwidth requirements. General full-function IPC is "not our job,
mate" but we were forced to specify the minimal capability necessary
to build useful multi-client windowed applications without waiting
for others to do real IPC.
The way I understand it, X officially supports TCP/IP and DECnet.
Are there plans to support TOPS, Novell, the Microsoft LAN Manager,
and Appletalk?
Whenever any vendor chooses to propose a standard port/service-name/
name-server-attribute-list/whatever for an X client and server to
connect on a particular network transport, I'm sure there will be
others willing to discuss and/or adopt it. Common or Standard
application-level syntax (e.g. command line args) for selecting
alternate transports is a slightly more touchy problem, as it has
direct impact on pre-existing users and applications. I'm not
aware of any formal proposals for either at this time.