Compression

[Dr. Joel M. Hoffman]

Having looked a bit further at vnc over the Internet and a slow modem,
first I want to publicly state that I'm very impressed.  VNC makes
very good use of bandwidth.  I have a suggestion for improvement.

Many screen backgrounds consist of repeated patterns, and while VNC is
great at sending solid backgrounds in a jiffy, the patterned
backgrounds take longer.  In general it's pretty hard to figure out
what repeats in the background, and then code it properly so as to
make it as efficient as solid colors, but I wonder if cheating a bit
wouldn't help.  Why not look at the current background pattern as
listed in the registry, and then send that as repeated?

(Screen savers are the other big waste of bandwidth....)

-Joel
(joel "at" exc.com)