[vox-tech] How X, Gnome, Sawfish, Nautilus relate (Was re: Pardon me, but...)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Richard Crawford (rscrawford@mossroot.com):

> But, anyway...  Thanks to everyone who helped me figure this out.  I
> appreciate it.  :)

So, one of the things I'm not sure emerged in this discussion is that
the sundry layers that run on Unix are network-capable and multiuser at
all levels.  Different command prompts can and often are running under
different user authority and on different hosts (machines).  The X11
graphics protocol is a _client-server network protocol_:  Your X11
server (engine) may be displaying the output of an X11 client[1]
(program) you're remotely running on a very different machine far, far
away -- alongside other clients running locally.

No version of Framemaker available anymore for Linux, and you have a
Linux box in front of you?  No problem:  SSH into the nearby Solaris 
machine in the same lab, and start the Solaris machine's version of 
Framemaker at its command prompt, automatically exporting its output
back across the SSH channel to your local X11 server (graphics engine)
in front of you.

The GNOME and KDE "desktop" software is slightly broken in that it fails
to take into account this network capability in its CORBA
component-software facilities.  But X11 natively is super-flexible in 
this area.

-- 
Cheers,
Rick Moen                      "vi is my shepherd; I shall not font."
rick@linuxmafia.com                               -- Psalm 0.1 beta