[Info-vax] Could XRDP be the next graphical interface for VMS?

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <9338c$550fec73$5ed4324a$30545 at news.ziggo.nl>,
	Dirk Munk <munk at home.nl> writes:
> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>> Dirk Munk skrev den 2015-03-22 13:32:
>>
>>> I agree. My first impression was that it was a kind of X-Windows
>>> variant. I
>>> had no idea it would be this primitive. With an X-Windows server you can
>>> run applications on several clients (in X-Windowa terminology), and that
>>> will be impossible with RDP I guess.
>>>
>>
>> The big difference is that a X-window client application are specificaly
>> written with X-windows in mind. You can not run anything that is not
>> written for X-windows in the first place.
>>
> 
> I get that, but Windows has its own way of doing something similar on 
> the local screen. A Windows applications will issue some instructions to 
> draw a window on a screen. It would have been nice if Microsoft had 
> thought of a way to issue those instructions on a remote PC/terminal, 
> just like with X-Windows.

Why?  I have had over a thousand usrs since I have started working
here.  To the best of my knowledge, I am the only one who has ever
done individual programs displaying on amy remote screen.  Everyone
else either uses RDP for Windows or an entire X desktop on their
remote system.  No, I lied.  I have one other user.  But he doesn't
even know how it works.  he just clicks on an icon and Xfig pops
up on his windows desktop.  

> 
>> Applications that are displayed over RDP does not know they are
>> displayed using RDP. There are no "RDP-applications".
> 
> No, but with a Unix or VMS system, applications with a GUI interface 
> don't know if they are run locally using a graphics card, or remotely on 
> a X-Windows server.

And the cost of that is limitations on the graphics capabilities.
As was already stated, most windows apps that run on a local display
will run on an RDP session.  I previously mentioned Minecraft as
an exception.  To be fair, sometimes Minecraft can not be run on a
local Windows Desktop either because of similiar shortcomings in
the graphics capabilities available.

> 
>>
>> And you can of course have several RDP sessions open, if you like,
>> against multiple servers. But each session is a full "desktop".
>> Not the "D" for "Desktop" in RDP...
>>
>> Primitive? No, not really. The big advantage is that you do not have
>> to have specificaly written applications (like X-windows does),
>> anything you can run localy on the server can also run over RDP.
> 

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>