Just a thought of surfaces

[Thong Nguyen]

I like using VNC to access a linux box - but I also like to have a nice
background on my linux desktop - which means it makes VNC slow (most of that
is actually due to the image processing on the client side).
So it would be interesting to introduce the concept of surfaces into VNC.
That way backgrounds can be put onto a 'surface' and when the background
needs to be drawn, the client already has it.
This is basically like the idea floating somewhere around the VNC website
about having framebuffers on the client the server could draw onto and off.
I think having a mechanism like haivng the client send to the server the
number of extra surfaces/framebuffers it can have...then have specialized
commands the server can send for when it wants a framebuffer of a specific
size to be created or destroyed.
Then ofcourse have a server command that will tell the client which surface
it plans to draw onto.
Imagine - this could extend to having a seperate frame buffer for each
window.
mm ...i can see some potential uses of that (imagine having a unix
application window on your windows desktop - but as a windows window - eg.
not inside a "viewer" window).  Then you start to mix applications from many
platforms on one desktop seemlessly ;).

I think something like this could be implemented - but I'm not clued up
enough about the server side of things to work it out.  I could do the
client side tho ;D.
And I do realise this complicates VNC (which at the moment is simple but
very effective).  However, this kind of thing (frambuffers etc etc) is
something which ALL viewers already do.

What do you guys think?

..Tummy..
/----------------------------\
Thong (Tum) Nguyen
UIN: 1488812
MSBETA: 282702
tummy "at" technologist.com
http://tummy.veridicus.com
\----------------------------/


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