Shrink Wrapping X Windows Clients on Intel Hardware

[Rick Richardson]

It appears that the major UNIX players on Intel 80[34]86 hardware
are all represented in some way or another in these forums.
In alphabetical order, and at the risk of forgetting someone, you
are AT&T, Dell, Everex, Intel, INTERACTIVE, SCO, and Sun.

I'd like to raise an important issue before you all step off
and start delivering UNIX SVRV.4 on Intel hardware prematurely.

In UNIX SVR3.2 no standard exists for a client to connect to
a local X server.  Clients which are compiled with one vendors
X windows libraries and toolkits cannot make a local IPC
connection to another vendors X windows server.  Because of
this, it is impossible to generate one binary to run in all
SVR3.2 UNIX environments.  Note that I am speaking of local
connections only -- network connections appear not to have
this problem.  The bottom line is that there is no such thing
as a "shrink wrapped" UNIX SVR3.2/X11.3 application.

In SVRV.4 we now have a standard GUI for the first time in UNIX.
I would like to see this standard GUI live up to the expectations
of both software developers and end users of 80[34]86 hardware.
Can you vendors please have a meeting of the minds?

You folks *must* agree on the mechanism(s) to be used by local
clients when connecting to a local server.  It's too late for
SVR3.2.  Don't repeat the mistake in SVR.4.

Rick Richardson
President
PC Research, Inc.
(201) 389-8963