Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!ukma!husc6!mit-eddie!apollo!nazgul
From: nazgul@apollo.COM (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Graphical BBS using X-windows.
Message-ID: <43658d97.1b147@apollo.COM>
Date: 23 May 89 17:10:00 GMT
References: <814T8M-KAUP@FINTUVM>
Reply-To: nazgul@apollo.COM (Kee Hinckley)
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 26

In article <814T8M-KAUP@FINTUVM> T8M-KAUP@FINTUVM.BITNET (Asko Kauppi) writes:
>    for me. Gradually I have learned more and more about various
>    means of making such a thing, and at the moment it seems like
>    it would be strongly based on X-Windows, perhaps making use of
>    the protocol's extension capabilities...

I'm curious how you would do this.  You can't assume that a random
X Server will be capable of serially connecting to your system, so
I think you'd have to run an XClient on the remote (from your BBS)
machine which interprets graphical codes from the BBS and then displays
something on the local machine.  This would be similar in concept to
AppleLink and the new Sears Prodigy network.  If you are going to do
that I would move it to a higher level than sending graphical commands,
and instead do more generic things.  Have commands such as 'Present
a menu of the following items' or 'put up a window' or 'display the
following text in the window', etc..  That way you reduce the bandwidth,
and enable non-X systems (such as PCs) to access the BBS.  This is in
fact something I have thought about doing with my BBS.  At this point
though we get somewhat off the topic of this newsgroup, so further 
conversation should probably be by mail.
							-kee
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