From: entropy@ee.WPI.EDU (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: X and named sockets
Reply-To: entropy@ee.WPI.EDU (Lawrence C. Foard)
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1992 03:20:09 GMT


If someone is planning to work on X please write to me, I should have
something functionaly equivalent to named sockets very soon although 
I've decided to do a few things differently (and make compatibility 
libraries later), I really need to talk to people who need to use these
to make sure they will do everything that is needed.
I've designed the interface to be equivalent to what TCP/IP will require
so code written and tested on these will work with only minor changes over
a network.
I started to port the BSD socket code only to find that I would have to
implement a large quantity of BSD specific kernel stuff (yuck), write
compatible kernel sockets from scratch (ick) or make a much simpler and cleaner
interface and use socket compatibility libraries. Given this choice
compatibility libraries seem to be the more logical option since free ware
ones already exist and can be adapted once the kernel stuff is there to handle
them. 
I've decided in to leave room open for "random access" sockets in the kinder
and gentler kernel code, so hopefully this will make for a less kludgy system
in the long run. This also means that something will be working in days rather
than weeks.