hansen@mips.COM (Craig Hansen) (02/03/88)
In article <21152@clyde.ATT.COM>, gwu@clyde.ATT.COM (George Wu) writes: > Okay, so what formats are used? I know X-Windows has some such convention > to transmit binary data across the network, ie. a client and a server on > different machines. What format do they use? In X, the server gets stuck having to take data in either byte order, possibly swapping the incoming data, except for bitmaps which are always (mumble)-endian. In my last reading of the X protocol, I couldn't find a good justification for bitmaps being different. > (Hopefully, Roy will expand > upon hton() and XDR. I think ASCII is self-explanatory.) hton() basically converts to big-endian. XDR is a system of passing data through procedures to translate it into and out of a "standard" external data representation, whose resemblance to Sun's internal data representation is purely coincidental... ;-> -- Craig Hansen Manager, Architecture Development MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. ...{ames,decwrl,prls}!mips!hansen or hansen@mips.com 408-991-0234