clarification requested: apparent termination of xrx project due to deletion of lbx from xorg

[Alan Coopersmith]

Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> in order to embed actual "real" applications, i figured, "hey, let's
> see if someone has done an NPAPI plugin to run an X-Server!" lo and
> behold, a 2 minute search on the internet showed up xrx, which,
> although it's not very well documented, is damn good, and it does
> exactly what i need: fires up an X-Windows app, under the control of a
> web browser, using < embed >.

xrx does not run an X server - it just allows embedding of a remote X
app in a web browser running on an existing X server.

> this will therefore work in webkit, safari, firefox, netscape, and
> anything else that supports the NPAPI plugin architecture.

If the machine was already running an X server and was configured to
have the xrx plugin set up in their browser and allowed random X client
connections from the internet, the combination of requirements which
very few machines ever really met.

> ... except... it won't, will it?  because, according to the above
> message, xproxymngproto support has been destroyed, thanks
> to the removal of lbx support.

Destroyed?  No - all the sources are still downloadable and buildable,
they're just no longer a core part of the window system, nor actively
maintained.   There's even occasional fixes applied to parts - like
the recent xrx fix I applied to fix builds with Firefox 3.1 since we
still ship xrx and it was easier to fix the build than to go through
the process to remove from our release.

> please can someone clarify that i have this right: that a particularly
> interesting and exciting line of possibilities for desktop
> development, hosted by the "free desktop organisation", has been
> terminated by the xorg developers.

The "free" in freedesktop doesn't mean we're going to do everything
you want for free - X.Org is severely constrained by the number of
people who are stepping up to actually do the work, and we thus have
trimmed less used and needed parts of the tree from the sets we're
committing to maintain.   If you need one of those parts, then you
can contribute your time to maintaining it - we're still hosting the
code trees and releases, even if they're not a core part of the
X Window System releases any more.

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering