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netserver_filter(display)Display Classesnetserver_filter(display)

NAME

netserver_filter -- server side of a distributed rendering pipeline

DESCRIPTION

The netserver_filter works with the netclient_filter to implement a distributed rendering pipeline by transferring display_data over a stream socket connection. The client side is the side that does the rendering and the server side is intended to do the CPU-intensive computations associated with some of the other filters.

A distributed pipeline is set up as follows: First, an instance of netclient_filter is created on the client side. This establishes a socket whose port number can be retrieved with the "portnum?" message. Then, on the server side an instance of netserver_filter is created, and told to connect to the netclient_filter via a "connect:" message. At this point a transparent link is set up between the two machines. On the client side, the netclient_filter serves as a data_in for other filters or the display_modellers. On the server side, the netserver_filter takes its data_in from other filters or modellers.

Creating a server process and its associated objects can be facilitated by use of the lymb_process object within the client process.

Requests come asychronously from the netclient_filter. The server process should not be doing anything except waiting for requests to come in from the client.

SUPERCLASS

display_filter

INSTANCE VARIABLES

no user-modifiable instance variables

MESSAGES

connect:(hostname,portnum) Establishes a connection to the client process. "hostname" is the name of the host the client process is running on, and "portnum" is the port number of the corresponding netclient_filter.

EXAMPLE