[FreeNX-kNX] First 1.5.0 source snapshot available

[Gian Filippo Pinzari]

Hi all,

the first snapshot of the sources that will be part of the upcoming
1.5.0 release are available. This is just a snaphost, so don't expect
everything to work perfectly well.

This snaphost is aimed at developers, so that they can prepare their
software to leverage the new NX functionalities. The most oustanding
difference, compared to the 1.4.0 series, is that now nxcomp runs
in-process into the X11, RDP and VNC agents and into nxssh. This
will require small changes into the FreeNX server, mainly in the
direction of simplification. While previously there were two proces-
ses to be monitored, namely the agent and the NX proxy, now there is
only one.

Another important difference is that now nxagent offers three work-
ing modes:

nxagent -D

Runs a virtual desktop.

nxagent -R

Runs in rootless mode, providing seamless window integration.

nxagent -B

Just acts as a NX proxy, forwarding the X traffic to the real display.

The latter mode replaces the previous single-window mode, that was ob-
tained by running a X client side nxproxy on the server. This is a
further simplification of the server architecture.

Future versions of nxagent will accept a -P parameter, specifying the
protocol that has to be implemented: X11, RDP, VNC.

Finally, NX client developers will surely appreciate that it is not
required to run a separate nxproxy to forward the NX traffic to the
daemons on the clients. An appropriate "switch" command will activate
the NX transport inside nxssh, letting a single nxssh process manage
either encrypted and unencrypted connections.

A final note about key-bindings:

- CTR+ALT+F

Toggles full-screen mode.

- CTRL+ALT+T

Shows the terminate, suspend dialog.

- CTRL+ALT+M

Maximizes of minimizes the window.

You can now resize the nxagent window. Unfortunately the desktop on
the server will not be resized. We'll start working on this as soon
as the present software stabilizes.

You can scroll through the desktop using the mouse or the following
key-bindings:

- CTRL+ALT+Mouse

Drags the viewport, so you can view different portions of the desktop.

- CTRL+ALT+Arrows or CTRL+ALT+Keypad

Moves the viewport by an incremental amount of pixels.

There are a number of other nifty features in the working:

- CTRL+ALT+S

It will activate "screen-scraping" mode, so all the GetImage origi-
nated by the clients will be forwarded to the real display. This
should make happy those who love taking screenshots ;-). By pressing
the sequence again, nxagent will revert to the usual "fast" mode.

Last but not least, the new nxagent will maintain a shadow frame-
buffer, where it will try to reflect the content of windows as they
are drawn on the real display. This should solve the problems we have
historically had with clients using the X server as a pixmap cache,
like OpenOffice.

The sources are here:

http://www.nomachine.com/sources/development/

Please be sure you read the announcement for additional information
and check the CHANGELOG of any of the released components:

http://www.nomachine.com/news_read.php?idnews=140

Have nice time with NX ;-).

/Gian Filippo.