> > Microsoft Remote Desktop works amazingly well over an ADSL VPN
connection. I
> > could actually use a Wacom drawing tablet. Network roundtrip best case
40
> > ms, avg. 100 ms.
>
> Is that a good example? Microsoft, I hear, uses a lot of
> platform-specific hacks to optimize their GUI performance.
>
> Not trying to pick a fight, just wondering.

I actually think it is a good example becuase it does illustrate what can be
accomplished by having a good local widget engine running against remote
application logic. A dedicated widget server would do an even better job
because the application knows it is being remoted. I have no recent
experience, but I reckon X-Windows should also work well over a VPN/ADSL
network setup.

When I saw Remote Desktop I said "Finally MS made something that is really
really cool which actually works all the time" A month later it stopped
working of course - but now I got a service pack and it rocks again - so in
terms of typical Microsoft network performance it is not a good example.

If take you VNC, Microsoft platforms do not work very well. X supposedly
works a lot better because VNC hooks into X while it must bitmap copy
Windows. So I guess X / VNC is comparable to Windows Remote Desktop in terms
of native platform hooks. (BTW: its quite fun to hook three VNC sessions up
in a circular fashion - as expected you get infinite windows :-)

What would happen if you created a QT widget server and published this under
GPL - then you both get a Ruby API to QT and the applications need not
conform the QT free license because the app is not a part of the widget
server app. Dowside is that QT doesn't have a Windows licence that works.

Anyway - a widget server would make it easier to make both cross platform
GUI and croos toolkit GUI.

I believe the future applications will not be browser based but server
controlled desktop GUI applications. In this light I think a widget server
is a really good idea. Just make the protocol fast and light - no bloated
XML. Would be nice with some ASN1 protocol logic.


Mikkel