X multiplexer

• Students: (1) Dheerendra Talur 5/1998, now at FORE Systems, (2) Vishakha Aggarwal 9/1999, now at Computer Associates, Cincinnati.
• Purpose: maintain copies of a window on many displays.
• Method: a multiplexer process connects to all the servers that govern the displays. One server is called active. The others are called passive. The multiplexer then pretends to be a new X server.
• What the students learned:
  1. The protocol used by X clients to speak with servers.
  2. How to translate requests based on tables stored in the multiplexer. (This part took considerable cleverness.)
  3. Coding and debugging a large, multi-machine project, including the different phases of a software development cycle.
  4. Writing up the project and packaging the resulting tools: Dheerendra's, Vishakha's.