[unios] Re: Networked GUI (was Posix and Networks)

[Anders Petersson]

From: Anders Petersson <anders.petersson@mbox320.swipnet.se>

At 22:01 1998-12-15 , you wrote:
>From: Pat Wendorf <beholder@ican.net>
>
>> Yes, networking is important, in some cases very essential. Could you
>> please mention the most important features you think a networked UI should
>> implement?
>
>1) Remote Dumb (graphical) Terminal Access

I'd want a remote access that does not differ from local access.

>2) Server side processing (goes with #1, but not always thought of when using
>smart terminals)

Yes. Distributed computing should be possible to implement too (later on).
Some users need that.

>3) User Profiles (not new, but very important)

Network-wide home directories... Log in anywhere and it'll look the same.

>4) Multiple Desktops using the same or multiple servers (done in Unix,
nice to
>have)

Hmm... do you mean multiple GUI desktops? That would be easy, different
windows could even be used by different servers. No problem if networking
is sufficiently transparent.

>5) Versatile Scripting/Automation language (necessary)

Yes. Not only important for networking, but everywhere. I want to only have
one script language (a generic one), that know how to communicate with
interfaces, support iterations and selections and such... that would
suffice for most uses.
I also want to reduce the differences between the script language
interface, programming interface and the users interface to the machine
(like administration commands). When scripting and programming, you issue
calls to object interfaces. This should work by the same mechanism. The
user is usually presented with a GUI, but he should be able to use the
command interpreter to issue identical interface calls as when programming.
This is useful when the desired function is implemented directly in an
interface.

>6) Machine Resource level security (more an OS thing, but I'd imagine
locking out
>a re-map of the supervisors terminal screen to stop external security
threats)

Security is very important when incorporating networking.

>7) Terminal Re-Map/Voyeur capability as training tool and snitch screen
for bosses
>(nasty, but possible)

Possible, yes. Could be useful for other things as well. ;-)

>8) Shared Program Use - multiple people working in the same program, on
the same
>data, live over a network.  (hard to implement but useful, "last entry"
update
>model)

Oh yes. I see no need to use the same program (as long as the effect is
equal, the method dones't matter), but sharing data is very useful. Just
have all users open the same file in a special shared mode, and they are
notified when changes are made by others and what's changed (changes are
seen directly). This requires little effort from the application programmer.

>That's all I can think of off the top of my head, any more ideas would be
>welcome.  Most of these ideas are mostly useful in an industrial
(1,2,4,5,7) and
>corporate (all) environments, however other than 5, I don't see anything
that's
>useful in a home environment, or possibly I'm so used to MS crap, that I
don't
>know any better :(
>Someone find a home use for this stuff.

An ordinary home user is not in possession of a network. In those cases,
these features are not loaded or even not installed at all. Flexibility...

I have another suggestion. Redundance in networking, which allows one or
several nodes to fail without loss of the joint computation or information.
To how big degree this can be done by the OS I don't know, but it's
certainly useful. What if you could just declare some data to logically
exist on the network, and it's automatically mirrored on several nodes,
with accesses made to the nearest copy without any effort from the
application's side?

binEng

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