Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!albanycs!steinmetz!uunet!lupine!ed From: ed@lupine.UUCP (Ed Basart) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: A Thought on X Terminals Summary: Font servers, Memory resource, X Stations Message-ID: <157@lupine.UUCP> Date: 2 Feb 89 02:11:21 GMT References: <19613@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Distribution: comp Organization: Network Computing Devices, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 26 1. Wish to have on the fly font service. 2. Wish to have more memory. The issue of on the fly font service is just beginning to be addressed by the consortium. There was a one day workshop last week just after the X technical conference. The idea is to build full-fledged font servers that can render and download any or all of a font (with all the appropriate license charges) to a server on the network. Now, this is a ways off in the future (probably beyond release 4), so for now, you'll have to settle for the available services. What server vendors are providing is downloading of a requested font using tftp or NFS. The fonts have to be lying about directories that xset can point to, and need to be in .snf format. This service appears to be usable. Regarding the wish for more memory, antiquated rotating devices and such, that's just what the client/server computer market (and the X model) calls for. The idea is to have a low cost, but high resolution "station" (not merely a terminal), that uses the network for services. If one wants access to Gbytes of files, bitmaps, icons and applications, that's what those monstrous "file server" machines churning away in the air-conditioned booths are for. It's then the job of the people in the station/server research labs to make this model become practical. We have the tools with NFS and its RPC mechanism to make this work.