Fwd: Lots more questions...
Fwd: Lots more questions...
- Subject: Fwd: Lots more questions...
- From: Randy Ford <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 20:03:37 -0600
I apparently didn't CC the list on this. Sorry.
randy.
Begin forwarded message:
From: Randy Ford <email@hidden>
Date: Fri Jan 24, 2003 5:27:40 PM US/Central
To: Chris Devers <email@hidden>
Subject: Re: Lots more questions...
On Friday, January 24, 2003, at 12:17 PM, Chris Devers wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Joseph R. Kiniry wrote:
--On Friday, January 24, 2003 11:20:06 AM -0500 Chris Devers
<email@hidden> wrote:
You can, but the X11 terminology for 'client' and 'server' is in my
opinion a little backwards (it's internally consistent & makes
sense if
you think about it, but it's the opposite of how the terms are
usually
used elsewhere).
How is it backwards?
I wasn't really looking to pick nits over this, but suffice to say
that in
most contexts (http, mail, ftp, etc) the machine you are act acts as a
client and the remote computer serves you content. As you say, you
run a
program on your computer and remote computers interact with that
program,
but much the same can be said of web browsers, and no one calls them
web
servers -- it's the opposite, in fact. Same for mail software & so on.
The difference is whether you are talking about machines as servers
and clients, or if you are talking about generic concepts of clients
and servers. A client requests that a server provide it with some
service. In the Unix world boxes are normally peer-to-peer. The
machine at which you are physically located doesn't determine
anything. It's not unusual to be physically at one box, remotely
logged in to another, and have the remote one requesting to print to
the local one. The local one is the print server.
If you telnet from one box to another, the one you are coming from is
a client requesting telnet service from the telnet server (telnetd) on
the box you are going to. When I ftp, I may be moving files either
way, but wherever I'm requesting the connection (ftp) is the client,
whatever is providing the service (ftpd) is the server. I commonly
ftp from a remote box back to the box I'm primarily on because I
control the ftp server on my box, but not on the remote one. My box
provides the ftp server in that case. Similarly, I'll put a file up
on my local http server (httpd) so that I can pick it up from a remote
machine; my machine is the server, the remote one is the client.
We can continue to propagate the language that the OS/hardware vendors
prefer: a Server is a more expensive box running a more expensive OS
that can be a Master for the cheeper Slave Clients. We could,
however, educate people that servers are entities that provide
services to clients who wish them to. My iBook runs an X server that
allows clients to display images and get keyboard and mouse events.
My old intel-based PCs run a lot of servers that provide other
services for clients. Their hardware is worth less than most
commercial OSes, and their OS is free. Since I can also log into them
locally, are they servers or clients? I say the provide services and
use clients.
I don't like the Master/Slave concept for Server/Clients: I prefer the
latter one. I live in a peer-to-peer world where any box may provide
services to clients. Any of the boxes can also have clients that are
getting services from servers, including ones its servers provide.
Besides being more to my philosophical likings, it's "internally
consistent and .. semantically correct." It's also externally
consistent with the generally accepted concepts that a clients
requests services from servers. (In the restaurants I frequent, I'm a
client. I request my server to bring be food, drinks, and to provide
other services. The waiter may also be one of my clients, where I
provide him consultant services. "Client" and "server" refer only to
the isolated relationship, not to any lasting quality of the
individual.) Also, viewing Server/Client in the Master/Slave way is
neither internally nor externally consistent, and thus is neither
semantically nor technically correct.
BTW, it's amazing how often stating "in my opinion" (previous post)
and "but I'm not interested in arguing the point" seems to responses.
<grin>.
randy.
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