Re: Remove the Xt/Xaw interface?

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

"Burke, Martin" wrote:
> 
> Just out of curiosity, what would this mean to multiplayer LAN games in
> future releases?  What would be used instead of Xt/Xaw, how well is it
> suited, etc.  Not that I can take over the Xt/Xaw maintenance, but
> multiplayer LAN is the format I play so I'm interested.

The tcl/tk interface can do multiplayer games using conventional
networking with each player running a copy of the program, rather than
the one-program-with-multiple-displays approach of the Xt/Xaw interface.
The new approach is also cross-platform, works on WANs, etc.  Its two
disadvantages are a) bugginess, and b) slowness, but the second is at
least partly due to extra packets added to help debug.  I think it's
actually pretty close to working completely, the bug seems to be some
kind of race condition that causes programs to fall out of sync after
a dozen turns or so.  Painstaking to isolate the cause, which is why
I've been putting off working on it...

Stan