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55 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
55 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
This is the original author Dscho's account on the project's initial history.
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If you want to know what happened afterwards, have a look at [NEWS](NEWS.md).
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History
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=======
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LibVNCServer is based on Tridia VNC and OSXvnc, which in turn are based on
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the original code from ORL/AT&T.
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When I began hacking with computers, my first interest was speed. So, when I
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got around assembler, I programmed the floppy to do much of the work, because
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its clock rate was higher than that of my C64. This was my first experience
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with client/server techniques.
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When I came around Xwindows (much later), I was at once intrigued by the
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elegance of such connectedness between the different computers. I used it
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a lot - not the least priority lay on games. However, when I tried it over
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modem from home, it was no longer that much fun.
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When I started working with ASP (Application Service Provider) programs, I
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tumbled across Tarantella and Citrix. Being a security fanatic, the idea of
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running a server on windows didn't appeal to me, so Citrix went down the
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basket. However, Tarantella has its own problems (security as well as the
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high price). But at the same time somebody told me about this "great little
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administrator's tool" named VNC. Being used to windows programs' sizes, the
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surprise was reciprocal inverse to the size of VNC!
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At the same time, the program "rdesktop" (a native Linux client for the
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Terminal Services of Windows servers) came to my attention. There where even
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works under way to make a protocol converter "rdp2vnc" out of this. However,
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my primary goal was a slow connection and rdp2vnc could only speak RRE
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encoding, which is not that funny with just 5kB/s. Tim Edmonds, the original
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author of rdp2vnc, suggested that I adapt it to Hextile Encoding, which is
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better. I first tried that, but had no success at all (crunchy pictures).
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Also, I liked the idea of an HTTP server included and possibly other
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encodings like the Tight Encodings from Const Kaplinsky. So I started looking
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for libraries implementing a VNC server where I could steal what I can't make.
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I found some programs based on the demo server from AT&T, which was also the
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basis for rdp2vnc (can only speak Raw and RRE encoding). There were some
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rumors that GGI has a VNC backend, but I didn't find any code, so probably
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there wasn't a working version anyway.
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All of a sudden, everything changed: I read on freshmeat that "OSXvnc" was
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released. I looked at the code and it was not much of a problem to work out
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a simple server - using every functionality there is in Xvnc. It became clear
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to me that I *had* to build a library out of it, so everybody can use it.
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Every change, every new feature can propagate to every user of it.
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It also makes everything easier:
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You don't care about the cursor, once set (or use the standard cursor).
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You don't care about those sockets. You don't care about encodings.
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You just change your frame buffer and inform the library about it. Every once
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in a while you call rfbProcessEvents and that's it.
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