Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!milliken@bbn.com
From: milliken@bbn.com (Walter Milliken)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Cray X11R2 clients connecting to Sun X11R3 servers
Summary: Should be OK
Message-ID: <39619@bbn.COM>
Date: 8 May 89 15:56:42 GMT
References: <17068@usc.edu>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: milliken@bbn.com (Walter Milliken)
Organization: BBN Advanced Computers, Inc.  Cambridge, MA
Lines: 31
In-reply-to: annala@neuro.usc.edu (A J Annala)

In article <17068@usc.edu>, annala@neuro (A J Annala) writes:
>o  Are there any inherent incompatibilities between X11R2 clients and
>   X11R3 servers?  If so, what kind of problems will I encounter?  Do
>   you have any software or operating procedure suggestions to solve
>   these problems?
>
>o  Does anyone else have experience running X11 in this configuration?

I've been running a similar configuration, using X11R2 clients on a
BBN Butterfly GP1000 and the MIT X11R3 Sun server on a 3/50 under
SunOS 3.5.  I haven't had any major problems with this, just the
cursor glitching problem endemic to X11R2 xterm running with the X11R3
server.  (Apparently caused by the changed font metrics in R3.)

In testing our own X software, we ran into a couple minor "gotcha's"
related to the font changes: one program was using font metrics in a
bogus way, and was terribly confused when the X11R3 metrics differed
from its (wrong) expectations.  Another program used a built-in font
name without allowing it to be changed.

I did run into some problems with the R3 server behaving slightly
differently than the R2 one -- one program of mine that mapped many
windows worked fine with R2, but would get stomped on by the R3 server
(it closed the connection, apparently because the output queue to the
client overflowed with expose events).

All the other programs I know of just worked.

>Thanks, AJ Annala

---Walter