On Sat, Mar 30, 2002 at 04:10:02PM +0000, Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote: > On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, martin f krafft wrote: > > put it that way: i *know* that you can use > > Xinerama to make two heads behave like one bigger screen without the > > windowmanager or another Xclient worrying about it. i also know that > > UNIX and X don't really care whether something is local or through the > > network. ergo: i want a second head to be established through the > > network onto the Xserver which dominates the screen 2cm to the right > > of where i am typing this now. [snip] > I'm not aware that it is currently possible, > but it does suggest a possible new feature. > > How about a video driver who's hardware is a remote X connection ? > Rather like Ricardo A. Baratto's suggestion of a null video driver > (to replace the null X server Xfvb).
Damn. I had exactly this idea a few years ago, and toyed around with it a little bit, but never got to a useful state. And now I've lost all that code. (Lesson learned: Always back up your cool code at home, don't trust the sysadmin to preserve your account when you let it go dormant "just for a month or so".) It would definitely be a cool project. I'd suggest a slightly different architecture: Have a direct-rendering client on the slave nodes, which accepts drawing commands from the network connection (I was using simple pixel rectangle transfers rendered via OpenGL [which got me the ability to make NT machines slaves too], but it could be X protocol) and renders them to the "slave" screen. The master server has a ServerLayout section that refers to many of these clients; either it connects to the client (slave display) or the slave display connects to the master server. Once connected the server sends drawing commands to the slave clients. There are then two ways to do a multi-head setup: Method one would have a Screen section that refers to the local display, and another Screen section that refers to a remote display. Method two would have two servers running on the local host; the server running at :0 is a simple "Virtual FB" server, with another server running at :1 that talks to the local hardware. (Bad for performance, but fabulous for reducing the complexity of the "Virtual FB" server's setup.) -andy _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
