[Simh] More compelling use for web server in SimH

[Mark Pizzolato]

On Friday, September 20, 2019 at 8:52 AM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> Phil Budne wrotte:
> > When I did the (oh so basic) GRAPHIC-2 device support for a PDP-7 UNIX
> > "second seat" I mused that a more realistic experience might be had by
> > implementing it as a web page
> 
> This is good timing, because I have increasingly been thinking about how
> to serve multiple users with graphical displays from SIMH.  Possible
> uses are:
> 
>  - Knight TV displays... we have solved this in an ad-hoc way.
>  - III displays driven by the WAITS operating system.
>  - "NG" and raster displays for the SITS PDP-11 timesharingsystem.
> 
> Opening multiple windows on the host display doesn't help much when
> there may be users coming in from the network.

I really don't see how any useful general purpose dynamic graphics can be 
presented within a browser without reinventing and then reimplementing 
a ton of what X-Windows already provides.  Of course, maybe I'm looking 
at this the wrong way, so please outline with some details how the current 
functionality provided by what currently exists in just the display library 
would work.  

The original display functionality had various interfaces to X11 and Win32 
for host display.  I added glue behind that to hook it into the existing simh 
video functionality.  Let's see what a reinvented model looks like which is 
transported and presented within a web browser.  Once we understand 
what that means and looks like, we can figure out how to fit it into the 
simulator framework.

- Mark