killer feature for XOrg.

[Jens Owen]

Glynn Clements wrote:
> somekool at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> 
>>there is something I always wish xfree would do but never did, and I feel now 
>>with XOrg, its possible. I would like every X Client (window) to be 
>>detachable likes the command line utility screen and then I would like to be 
>>able to kill my X server, reattach the client whenever I want on whatever X 
>>server I want, even remote X.
>>
>>so we could have window manager offering to the user "Send this window to ..." 
>>and you could send a window to your friend running a X server too...
>>
>>in fact, it would detach the window and reattach it somewhere else.
>>
>>what do you guys think ?
> 
> 
> It isn't realistic to implement this at the X protocol or Xlib levels. 
> Too many things would need to be changed that it wouldn't really be X
> any more (i.e. you're talking about The Y Window System, not X12 and
> certainly not X11R<something>).
> 
> More viable solutions are:
> 
> 1. A toolkit which could reconstruct widget trees from scratch as
> required.
> 
> 2. A proxy X server.
> 
> Regarding #2, you can already do essentially what you are suggesting
> to entire sessions using Xvnc. Doing it on a per-window basis would
> bring up some interesting issues with relationships between windows
> which were on different physical servers.
> 

I agree that Xvnc provides many of these features at the session level. 
  Having spent a fair amount of time looking at VNC capabilities and 
limitations recently, most of the architectural hurdles to pushing 
beyond session sharing and into the realm of capabilities that Mathieu 
describes are within the X11 subsystem.

If the X11 architecture were extended to understand the notion of 
multiple display connections dynamically being created and destroyed, 
then the toughest issues could be addressed.  One example of what I call 
a tough issue is handling individual expose events that come from unique 
window layouts.  Another is handling widely ranging font resolutions 
from tiny X servers to DMX display walls.

If an entirely new rendering engine can be defined as an extension to 
X11R6, I wonder if the notion of multiple secondary display connections 
couldn't as well.

-- 
                                /\
          Jens Owen            /  \/\ _
   jens at tungstengraphics.com  /    \ \ \   Steamboat Springs, Colorado