[9fans] X device

[Digby Tarvin digbyt@acm.org]

This is somthing I suggested in a private mail, which I thought
I would put to the list to see if any more experienced Plan9'ers
could see any problems with my proposal.

What I would like is a Plan9 display driver that, instead of
talking to a display adapter card on the bus, controls a remote
display using the network and the X protocol.

Effectively, I want to be able to use my X terminal as a Plan9
console. This would be different from implementing Xlib
on Plan9, because that would result in a situation where only
X aware applications could be used on X-terminals. 
If the X terminal looked like a Plan9 device, then all existing
applications should work unmodified, and a single Plan9 system
would become multi-user in (the Unix sense, rather than the
Windows NT sense of one screen per CPU).

Also, if the driver were to talk to a window on the X terminal
(which could be the root window), then it would be possible
to use the same X term to access other operating systems
at the same time.

Does anyone know if there is any fundamental conflict between the
types of access a Plan9 screen driver needs to make, and the
capabilities of the X protocol?

The other possibility that came to mind was implementing a
VNC server for Plan9. That would allow users of Unix/Doze/NT/Mac
to pull up a Plan9 system on their screens without having to
have a copy of the OS to run..

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk