[Tfug] remote desktops

[Bexley Hall]

Hi, Jim,

--- On Fri, 10/17/08, Jim Secan <jim at nwra.com> wrote:

> What is your need?  Are you wanting good smooth scrolling while
> you're playing Doom 10 on a remote machine,

<frown>

> or is this mostly for maintenance access?

No.  or maintenance I could use a telnet/ssh session.

> I use TightVNC (using it right now, in fact) to
> work on an XP box
> in the Seattle area, and on occasion use Radmin to link
> from that machine
> to another one up in Thule, Greenland.  The lag sometimes
> drives me crazy,
> but it works.  I would not want to use this for anything
> needing rapid refresh, however.

I'm more concerned with doing things like remote *debugging*
(of code, not "system").  X/LBX "do the right thing" (in that
they deal with UI *objects* -- characters, regions, etc.)
instead of "pixels".

But, when using a debugger, there's often a lot going on on the
screen -- instead of just a new line of text appearing at the
bottom of the display as the rest of the display's contents
scroll off the top.

As you said, the lag can be frustrating (imagine part of that
link being a LOW SPEED modem  :-/ ).  This is particularly
true for this type of application since there's no inherent
way for you *watching* the screen to know when the update
is complete (e.g., by contrast, running a serial console
through telnet you can *see* the next "reply" come in at the
bottom of the screen, etc.).

I alnost wonder if I am better off with a character based
debugger running under a *smart* curses (to reduce bandwidth)
and just adding a "update complete" indicator...

I was curious if there were other protocols that might be
a bit smarter (e.g., RDP) since anything that works with
raw pixels would probably choke.

--don

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