Re: Network Transparency

[Martin Brecher]

Hi Michael, -

the GNUstep backend is loaded dynamically. You can even have several 
backends installed (e.g. the default xlib backend and the libart 
backend) and tell GNUstep which one to load using the user defaults (you 
will learn about that later).

But, you cannot load backends over the network as you describe it. But 
with the X11 backends you can of course address a remote X11 display 
using -display or -NSHost on the command line. (I haven't tried that 
with GNUstep myself.)

For all other aspects of network transparency, GNUstep has Distributed 
Objects (DO). This technique allows applications to access remote 
objects as if they were local. There is a clustering project called 
Zillion <http://zillion.sourceforge.net/> which employs the means of DO.

Greetings,
Martin Brecher

Michael Adams wrote:
> I just found out about GNUStep.  It sounds like a very
> exciting project.  I have one question though.  Does
> GNUStep support network transparency like X11 does?
>
> I suppose one could build a back-network and then have
> it connect to, for example, a front-network/back-w32
> client app.  But that would require applications to
> dynamically load their back library.  Otherwise they
> would have to target back-network when they compile
> and that isn't very transparent now is it?  So are the
> back libraries dynamically loaded?
>
> Ok I guess that's two questions instead of one so I'll
> stop here.
>
> Michael D. Adams
> mdmkolbe@yahoo.com