Your thinking kind of matches my own. A couple of comments in-line. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, 2002-04-16 03:32 Subject: Re: Citrix vs VNC v New Moon
(SNIP) > In the past year or so there's been a big leap forward in universal print drivers. > Citrix and now New Moon are pushing these. The citrix course I went on said > that uni-drivers aren't perfect, but they're not unuseable. I'm wondering how > something like that could be set up on VNC. Speaking of the native Microsoft Terminal Services stuff, the number one cause for blue screens and other crashes server-side is bad print drivers. Citrix and ThinPrint do seem to do this better from what I hear, and you're right - they aren't perfect yet. > Maybe more work on zlib tunnels would be a good thing? Going for a multi- > platform idea, you'd need one tunnel to handle the traffic back to the viewer. > The viewer would need to pass this information to it's own printers and the key > stumbling block would be how the server creates the print job. > > You'd need a driver that suited (l)unix, max, windows, etc. Some sort of PDF > style technology might do it, but I'm not a programmer. In any case, you'd end > up installing that driver on each box. :-) This is one of the thorny issues that bothers me about the idea of extending VNC. The classic example of Linux/Unix development replacing a Windows service is in my opinion Samba. The most astonishing thing about Samba is that other than a registry tweak or two early on, it requires *NO* changes to the client! No add-ons, no special software, nothing. Print services are a different thing, and the major problem any integration faces is the lack of reliable underlying software for print virtualization on Windows systems. I think a lot of this has already been worked out in the Linux world with using PostScript for portable print ability and that might be a direction to go... > > True multi-user support on Windows would be a rat's nest; having some > > way to easily integrate things such as direct cross-LAN file and print > > support is not as cumbersome though and is a respectable need in the > > Windows arena for VNC. > > Multi-user Windows, IMO, is not really a VNCissue - unless we're talking about > an add in to Terminal Services that replaces the RDP client. I think there is a > unix gadget that will do this, but it's not for vanilla MS TS boxes. > > Replacing RDP with VNC's tight / zlib you'd get connectivity from any system, > whereas at the mo RDP is Windows clients only. I think this would be a winable > battle.... but I wouldn't like to write the code <g> > You could probably make a bit of cash out of the support..... as the code would > need to be open. :-) > > Later, > Richard > > --------------------------------- > Richard Harris > Environment IT, NCC > Ext 4509 > --------------------------------- > > "Service, price , quality: pick any two." > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the line: > 'unsubscribe vnc-list' in the message BODY > See also: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/intouch.html > --------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the line: 'unsubscribe vnc-list' in the message BODY See also: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/intouch.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------
