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From: gallo@cs.albany.edu (Andrew Gallo)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: wouldn't it be nice if....
Keywords: multiterminals
Message-ID: <834@hartmanis.albany.edu>
Date: 16 May 91 20:09:48 GMT
Organization: SUNY Albany, Comp Sci Dept, Albany, NY
Lines: 34


	I'm a casual Win 3.0 user, and plan to buy a new 386 so I can run it.
I use my PC mostly for terminal connections to my university's Unix machines.
	Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way for you to have multiple 
widows open on a remote machine, like X allows you to do but via modem.  
	Imagine this: a client sits between your terminal program and 
your COMM port.  You then open multiple instances of Kermit (or whatever 
term program) on your PC.  Every time Kermit tries to write to the 
COMM port your client interupts and intercepts the information, decides where
the data came from (each instance of Kermit is given an ID), and encapsulates
a packet.  The packet is sent over modem to a server running on the Unix 
machine which maps Window ID's to Unix process ID's (pid's).  The server
would be waiting on /dev/ttyxx for i/o, unpack the packet, determine for 
which process the data is intended, and send it down a pipe to that process.
Likewise processes would write to a pipe to the server who would encapsulate
a packet destined for a particular window on the PC side.  
	This *should* allow a Windows user to visually and interactively 
send/receive i/o from multiple Unix processes, simulating the X functionality.
	There are a couple of problems: bootstrapping (switching from 
character transport to packet transport after an initial connect is made), 
mapping pid's to Window ID's, catching Kermit's attempt to write to a COMM
port (although I'm sure an interupt handler could be written to do this).

	So I'm asking for your educated opinion - is this doable?  Has 
someone beat me to it?  If so, who, and where can I get the program?  If
not, any suggestions on how to implement this design?

	Thanks for input.  If this is not discussion that should be posted
on the net, feel free to send me private email at gallo@cs.albany.edu.

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> Andy Gallo            | State University of | "If six, turned out to be     <
> gallo@cs.albany.edu   | New York at Albany  |  nine, I don't mind..."  8-)  <
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