Reflect the window in client program which is running on a server

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Hi,
How to draw a GUI window which is already running on a server on my client program.
Any suggestions on how to implement this feature.

Regards,

Posted 19-Sep-11 5:07am

AshakiranBhatter

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enhzflep · Answer 1 · 2011-09-19T06:46:00

Solution 1

1. Create bitmap of server's window (on server)
2. Send bitmap to client
...
...
1. Receive sent bitmap
2. Draw image to client area(windows client-area) of client program.

Posted 19-Sep-11 6:46am

enhzflep

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[no name] 19-Sep-11 12:49pm

but if the server is linux and host is windows. does the same concept can be applied ?

enhzflep 19-Sep-11 12:59pm

Last time I checked, Linux was perfectly capable of displaying(and creating) bitmaps. :p

To say that I dislike the X11 windowing system would be a pleasant understatement - I wouldn't have a clue on how to go about doing screen capture in Linux.

But still, the method would be the same regardless of any platform-specific implementation details. I'd suggest a quick google for 'GPL linux screen-capture software' - that would probably seem more humane to me than trying to decipher the X11 docs.

[no name] 19-Sep-11 13:33pm

i am worried that the server is not linux or unix. if it is mainframes then i guess i need to write explicit server program to capture the screen and the i need to send it to client program each time. But in this scenario i need to explicitly write screen capture software using ansi C. Am i right ?

enhzflep 19-Sep-11 13:48pm

Might I enquire as to what OS you suspect it may be running?

Anyhow, this strikes right at the crux of the whole Portability issue. I could go out and buy a video-game(the same one) for PC, XBOX, PS3, Wii etc, etc. The game is the same regardless of platform, though there will be platform specific code to perform input and output.

If you can modularize the code such that you can create a functioning client/server pair running under a familiar system (e.g windows), it's simply a matter of re-implementing the parts that are specific to the system that the server is running.

In any case, you WILL have to find out what OS the server is running.

As to whether or not to use ANSI C or not, I'm not smart enough to know if that's any more relevant than the price of fish in China at the moment. (my impression is that it's not)

[no name] 19-Sep-11 13:54pm

hp nonstop tandem is the operating system

enhzflep 19-Sep-11 15:00pm

EE--owch!

I can hardly find any references to the OS at all. But still, the concept still stands - take a screen-shot and send it to the client program.

If an exact copy of the GUI isn't required, you could instead send the position and data contained within any controls from the server to the client, where they will be re-created using the clients available GUI functions.

I suspect that Windows' Remote Desktop uses the capture image and send approach - meaning for example, you could remote desktop a machine with a newer OS than the client, yet you will still see all of the correct gui elements - like transparent taskbar, window borders/titles, etc, etc. A 1920x1080 x 24bpp screen would require the sending of 5.93 MB of raw image data - compression may help.
A (rather loose) example of the other approach may be seen in a web-browser. The server sends the minimum data, like control position and text, while the client renders these elements using it's own libraries - IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari all display the same data in more-or-less the same way. They also cut-down enormously on the amount of data required to be sent - a very long text based web-page may weigh in at 200kb, rather than many, many multiples of 5.9 MB.