ht@cogsci.edinburgh.ac.uk (07/27/90)
Two weeks ago I posted a query about X support for D machines.
I had two responses:
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 12:18:24 -0400
From: Rob Crittenden <yogurt@edu.umd.mimsy>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.xerox
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
It's not worth it. I was in the process of building one here at
Maryland and from what I got in talking to the Xerox reps, it runs
slower than X on a Sun 2! Probably has to do with the Xerox having
only 1.5meg (or up to 3.5, but that still isn't much).
--
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| yogurt@cs.umd.edu Robert Comp Sci Dept, U of Md | | uunet!cs!yogurt
Crittenden College Park, MD 20742 | +------------------- so much beer,
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Date: 19 Jul 90 10:08:43 +0100 (Thursday)
From: Peter Robinson <pr@cam.cl>
Sender: pr@cam.cl
Summary: We have an X10.4 server running under XDE
Attention: Henry Thompson
We have a server for X10.4 that runs under XDE. This is written
entirely in Mesa, using none of the X code distributed from MIT, and
uses the standard XDE TCP/IP support. This has been in use for a
three or four years now and is stable and reliable, if slightly
incomplete. We routinely use it to access microVAXes in our
distributed computing system from Daybreaks. The performance is quite
acceptable (better than a monochrome VAXstation) but has occasional
hiccups which we attribute to quirks in the underlying TCP/IP code.
The server is rather complicated because it places all the X windows
inside XDE windows. This means that all the usual XDE tools continue
running and using the input system in their ordinary way while the X
clients elsewhere believe that they are talking to an ordinary X
server.
This is allied with a simple XDE tool and a Unix daemon that allow an
XDE user to cause a named Unix machine to run an xterm connected on
one side to a login shell and on the other to an X connection back to
the XDE machine. Thus an XDE user can log on to an arbitrary Unix
machine with little effort.
We never quite got round to upgrading it to X11. All our other
workstations are now running X11.4, but we have retained an X10
version of xterm, so at least we can run terminal sessions from
Daybreaks. I do not beleive that there are any great intellectual
difficulties in upgrading the server, just a certain amount of tedium.
We also wanted to install XDE 6.0 before doing any further work, but
that has been rather slow arriving.
We have not given much thought to making the server available under
ViewPoint but, given the TCP/IP code, I imagine that there would be no
great difficulties.
If you are interested in integrating Xerox workstations into a Unix
environment, you should also be aware of some other pieces of software
that we have written. We have an XNS-SMTP mail gateway running under
XDE using the Foreign Gateway Assistant, although this is about to be
superseded by Xerox's own product. We also have tools for XDE and
InterLisp that allow network news to be read from Unix servers using
the remote read news protocol. There are also a number of utility
tools to handle rwho transmissions and so on.
Back on the original question, you might care to check on Cal Poly's
X11 server project which Jeff Weinstein was working on. This involved
rebuilding an XDE bootfile with X windowing instead of XDE windowing.
He had two main problems: it was slow and not very stable. Jeff has
now left Cal Poly University, but I think the source code might be
available from the Xerox UGP office (if it still exists).
- Peter Robinson.
University of Cambridge Telephone: +44 223 334637
Computer Laboratory Facsimile: +44 223 334678
New Museums Site Telex: 81240 (CAMSPL-G)
Pembroke Street
Cambridge E-mail: pr@cl.cam.ac.uk
England CB2 3QG pr:ComputerLab:CambridgeUniv