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Re: [TCLUG:12935] Remote X (client/server rant)



On Thu, Jan 27, 2000 at 01:01:52PM -0600, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> Eric M. Hopper said:
> > 	Servers are things that wait for clients to connect and request
> > services.  X clients are programs that connect to X servers and ask them
> > to display stuff for them.
> 

> But, when you've got a UI, most activities are initiated from the
> user's side.

	True, but IMHO, where the user is has nothing to do with the
client-server role?  Is your server any less a server for having been
traversed by a web spider?  How about if you registered your web server
to be traversed by that spider?  I mean, you're the one who initiated
the action.  Doesn't that make you the client?

> My view of the terms is that the client initiates action and the
> server responds.  When I'm on thisbox and execute 'ssh otherbox
> command', command may be running on otherbox and open a connection to
> thisbox so it can display itself, but it's doing so in response to a
> request that came from thisbox.  IMO, that means that thisbox is the
> client and otherbox is the server, despite X's claim that it's the
> other way around.

	How about if you telnet back to thisbox from otherbox?  Is the
telnet daemon then a client?

> Aside from confusion with X having the user sit at the server, which
> then talks to the client instead of the other way around, this
> distinction breaks down for a number of applications (most of which
> have difficulty dealing with IP masqing) where the client connects to
> the server which then may open a connection back to the client.  By
> your definitition, both pieces of software are then both clients and
> servers to each other, even if one is merely reacting to requests made
> by the other.  (It could definitely be argued that they have different
> roles for different transactions, but the overall/general identities
> are not, IMO, so fickle.)

	Yes, this is kind of true.  For the reasons I stated above, I
don't think this situation is an accurate description of what goes on
between an X client and X server.

	The basic problem here is that GUIs are just NOT servers in
people's minds.  How would you consider the role if the X server were
running the display for a big overhead project and various people in the
room ran stuff from their boxes that showed stuff on the projector?
Who's the client and who's the server then?

*grin*,
-- 
Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
Some think it is the voice of God.  Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul.     ---Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.mn.org  http://omnifarious.mn.org/~hopper) --

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