TCLUG Archive
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
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) --
PGP signature