The "loop and a half"

[Grant Edwards]

On 2017-10-09, Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:

> I can't comment on Windows. However, X11's remote access is hardly
> usable.

15 years ago it worked great over 256Kbps DSL links.  Even on dialup
links it was usable (if a bit clumsy).

It's the toolkits that are broken when it comes to remote access.

> The problem is it's too low-level ("mechanism, not a policy"). What
> we'd need is this setup:
>
>    +---------+
>    | client  |
>    +---------+
>    | toolkit |
>    |   RPC   |
>    +----+----+
>         |
>         | TCP
>         |
>    +----+----+
>    | toolkit |
>    |  server |
>    +----+----+
>         |
>         | Local
>         |
>  +------+------+
>  |   Wayland   |
>  |  compositor |
>  +-------------+

But then you need to re-impliment that for each and every toolkit.
With the old X11 scheme, it only need to be implimented once.

> Unfortunately, what we wil be given is:
>
>    +---------+
>    | client  |
>    +---------+
>    | toolkit |
>    |   lib   |
>    +----+----+
>         |
>         | Local
>         |
>  +------+------+
> |   Wayland   |
> |  compositor |
>  +-------------+
>
>
> Which will get rid of the network transparency altogether.

For all practial purposes, X11 network transparancy has been gone for
years: it only works for apps that nobody cares about.  I still use it
occasionally just to verify that a remotely upgraded/installed
wxPython app will start up, but it's way too slow to actually _use_
the app.

-- 
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