guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum) (12/12/87)
Although X as distributed uses TCP/IP to connect clients and server, it is possible use other network protocols by relatively small changes to the lowest levels of library and server. We have almost gotten the server half of such a set-up running using Amoeba (a distributed operating system with its own, capability-based RPC mechanism). The library half should be working as soon as we solve problems with the C compiler. The question is, how much does this buy us? Since Amoeba is not Unix, X clients requiring advanced Unix features won't run under vanilla Amoeba. What percentage of the available client applications will be convertable to a different operating system, where, e.g., one will have <stdio.h> available, but not select(2)? I would assume that there will be VMS support for X, so that one might expect clients to be OS-independent, but then again, you can never know what hacks a performance-driven application programmer may use... (including VAX assembly :-) Can anybody comment on this? It would also be interesting to know if third-party software for X would come binary or source. -- Guido van Rossum, Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Amsterdam guido@cwi.nl or mcvax!guido or (from ARPAnet) guido%cwi.nl@uunet.uu.net