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Re: using XDPS backend to display NextOpenStep apps remotely


From: Gregory Casamento
Subject: Re: using XDPS backend to display NextOpenStep apps remotely
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2024 16:41:53 -0400

Hey,

I had given this some thought some years ago.   Let's go over what you said you need...

1) running the next emulator headless... 

I think this could be accomplished, no problem.   You could either use Previous or qemu (running the intel version of OPENSTEP).

2) Communication via DPS...

You don't need XDPS for this.  The XDPS backend for GNUstep was an attempt to use the Display Postscript that was going to be integrated into X11, but this never happened because the people on the project determined that postscript was better done as a client/app side thing rather than in the X server itself.   Here is the discussion...


One place you can get information is from the following website, he has done a fair bit of hacking on PS and DPS...


Of particular interest is project Akira.   It may be possible to connect to the DPS server over a port and communicate with it, but no one has done that and I am not sure the remote capability is present either in the DGS/DPS backend that X was planning.

3) Pasteboard bridging...

The pasteboard on the NeXT likely uses the typedstream style of encoding that was common on the NeXT machine.   This encoding has never been reverse engineered... one possible resource for this is a python program I found recently that discovers, in part, the structure of typedstream archives...


The tool doesn't get the data it just breaks down what data is there which could be instrumental in reverse engineering it.

CONCLUSION...

As you can see there is a fair amount of work here.   This is all of the information I have discovered over the years on this.  If I find anything else or dig up any other information that might be useful I will let you know.

Yours, GC




On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 2:32 PM Ondrej Florian <onflapp@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,

I am working on integrating the Next emulator
(http://previous.alternative-system.com/)
into the GSDE  (https://github.com/onflapp/gs-desktop).

I understand the original Next/OpenStep could display apps remotely (I
guess that's where NXHost arg comes from).
Does anyone know how this actually worked?
Could it be possible to use XDPS backed for for that?

My hope is that I could run the Next emulator "headless" and display
the original apps along side GNUstep apps in the same desktop (plus
bridging pasteboard etc. ;-).
Kind of like how the classic mode worked on OS X.

Any ideas?

Many thanks,
Ondrej





--
Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant
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