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

[Pat Wendorf]

From: Pat Wendorf <beholder@ican.net>

> >1) Remote Dumb (graphical) Terminal Access
>
> I'd want a remote access that does not differ from local access.

There may be a problem implementing high performance graphics (such as games),
over a remote session, if the terminal was dumb.  There has to be a line drawn
somewhere, where a set of useful generic objects can work remotely, while some
others would just not be practical.  We'd need smart terminals to do all objects.

> >3) User Profiles (not new, but very important)
>
> Network-wide home directories... Log in anywhere and it'll look the same.

Network-wide home directories sounds better than user profiles... I'll use that
instead

> >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.

Have you ever used X-Windows?  Same type of deal.  You have a desktop that you
start in, and a bunch of virtual desktops you can switch to.  This makes
multitasking much nicer, as it allows all your programs to run full screen, while
still being able to jump back and forth without minimizing and such.  What I mean
is that you can have multiple users logged into the same system, in the same
GUI... It's only one user doing anything, but there are two user profiles active
on the same desktop.

> >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.

I was thinking more of the white board example, where multiple users access the
same program at the same time... you can see them typing and mouse movement and
such... I don't think it translates well for most applications, but it could be
useful for some.

> 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?

This is something to think of. I'm not too sure of how it works in reality, but I
do know AS/400's can do it.  I think this should be considered, and I do believe
it can be just another addition to the system abstract... just like distributed
processing...

--
-----------------------------
Pat Wendorf
UniOS Group
http://members.xoom.com/unios
beholder@ican.net
ICQ: 1503733
-----------------------------



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