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List:       vnc-list
Subject:    Re: VNC feature request
From:       Quentin Stafford-Fraser <quentin () orl ! co ! uk>
Date:       1998-11-26 10:28:12
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Todd Rinaldo wrote:

>  Wouldn't it be better presentation
> to have it as a checked menu item for ctrl and alt rather than 2 separate
> items? Then you could tell whether the ctrl key was up or down.
>

Yes, in many ways that would be nice.  However, the way VNC works at present
makes that rather tricky.  The client is almost completely stateless, and has
very limited information about the current state of the server.  This is partly
what makes it so simple to break connections and re-establish them without any
problems.

It is easy for the viewer to remember whether it 'pressed' the control key, but
of course there may be multiple users connected to the server, and there might
be someone sitting at the physical console, any of whom might press keys.  So
the server would need to report its keyboard state to each of the connected
viewers, and things might get out of sync if there were a substantial delay on
the network - viewers thinking a modifier was pressed when it wasn't, etc.

Still, we might add a bit more feedback in a future protocol version.

Regards,
Quentin
--
----------------------------------------------------
Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser        www.orl.co.uk/~qsf
  ORL - The Olivetti & Oracle Research Laboratory



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