Re: Tk - is MainWindow robust?

[zentara]

I don't really understand what you are trying to do? It would seem that if you want to open linked displays on different machines, you would get more reliable results using sockets to communicate, rather than relying on the MainWindow's event loop.

[matt.tovey]

My current version does indeed use sockets. Problems with it are:
- All nodes need to have the relevant modules and libs available (I'm using Imager). Node architectures are also not homogeneous.
- The nodes' displays need to be started from the master. I'm currently doing this with rexec and it's not as neat as I would like.
- The new version needs to support WindowsXP, which has Exceed running (X-Server), but no rexecd.

Hence my thought to just open MainWindows direct from the master.

[dk]

how about still use sockets (or pipes), but instead of establishing a communication between different programs on different boxes uning local displays, communicate between different programs on a single local box using remote displays? I mean, if your current version is somewhat like

box1:select(@handles_from_boxes) and do_logic()
box2:tk-interface.pl: connect to box1, create windows and buttons,

then I propose to do this instead:

box1: for ( @boxes) {
     $ENV{DISPLAY} = $_;
     system "tk-interface.pl";
}
select(@handles_from_boxes) and do_logic()

[matt.tovey]

At first I read this and thought "Great, the worst of both solutions!". But thinking it through, this actually sounds pretty good. Everything runs on one box, so the architecture problems disappear. No more rsh. Performance will be improved over my proposed monolithic solution (these are mostly SMP boxes).

Best of all, I get to keep using the socket code I wrote that I'm so proud of. :)

Don, thanks for your comments too. Yes, I am somewhat nervous about how complex the system is becoming! I can't say too much about the application, but this isn't something that I would know how to solve with a web-browser.

Cheers, Matt