Network transparency argument

[David Eisner]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 1:48 PM,  <Darxus at chaosreigns.com> wrote:
> The "network transparency argument" is pointless because network
> transparency via the X protocol will never go away.
>
> I think people who are concerned about this must not be aware that X
> clients already run seamlessly with Windows or Mac OS as the native
> graphical environment.

Such ignorance may account for some concern.  But even those who know
that Wayland will support an X Server Wayland Client might be worried
for the following reason: Should Wayland become ubiquitous on the Free
desktop, it may come to pass that most (non-browser-hosted) apps will
be written as native Wayland clients. Let's say you really need to run
AppFoo on a remote system.  If AppFoo isn't an X client, you're out of
luck.

Now that's not necessarily a show-stopper -- VNC or SPICE might be
good enough. And if the app is built using a suitable toolkit (e.g.
Qt) then it should be possible to compile it as an X client or a
Wayland app, if it is written carefully.

The compromises necessary to build network transparency into Wayland
may not be worth the trouble (I don't know enough to say whether this
is so).  But it's not necessarily the case that those raising the
issue aren't aware that they'll be able to run X apps on Wayland.

-David

-- 
David Eisner     http://cradle.brokenglass.com