Comment waypipe (Score 1) 131
It requires support on both sides (ahem about the latest ffmpeg kerfuffle), and really x11 forwarding should have required such support if there were any alternatives at the time.
The balances between X11-style generic rendering pieces v. frame buffers v. application-specific rendering agents is an ongoing work of discovery. The network trade-offs are quite different now. We could gripe about ADSL, but that also modeled (in a gross, disgusting way) a server trying to deal with a zillion clients. The server can sink the requests, but responding depends on the back-and-forth with each client. Using application-specific protocols is one BW / latency improvement. The X protocol didn't have to cope with the extreme imbalance between "client" and "server." Server here being the display server and the reverse of what I just described. That often trips up people.
Let's not even talk about PHIGS unless the discussion is about lessons learned..