more efficient than X? (was RE: 'GO-Global' Related Commercial Ef fort)

[Ivan Popov]

On Sun, 19 Apr 1998, Alex Nicolaou wrote:

> > Can't think why anyone would...  This is supposed to be MORE efficient
> > that X-Windows.  If you can't run over 10Mbps, then we're in 
> > deep trouble
> > :)
> 
> Ok, I read this and decided I must be doing something wrong. I then sat
> down and read all the HTML pages in the docs tar (when all else
> fails...) and tried out the X-server version of VNC (I don't have perl
> but found the server was trivial to start directly anyway). 
> 
> While it is true that the X version is great, certainly adequate
> performance and quite usable on my PC viewer (as the documentation
> suggests) it doesn't equal the performance of my PC's X-server. It is
> perhaps twice as slow at listing /bin inside a shell (kind of hard to
> guess exactly, the operation is too fast to time with my usual X-server
> and only barely slow enough to try timing with VNC). Have I missed a
> step that'll make it go faster?

Your test is not suitable. X-protocol has an idea about fonts and some
other "special cases". VNC, in contrast, is a protocol for transmitting
just a framebuffer state.

It is more efficient than e.g. X for "not too complicated image not
covered by X special cases". A text is "complicated", and it is covered by
the fonts concept in X.

Anyway, I find VNC a way more acceptable over slow lines than X without
additional compression.

Regards,
--
Ivan Popov <pin "at" math.chalmers.se>
Systemman, Driftavdelningen, Matematiska institutionen, Chalmers TH