Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Mon, 31 Aug 1992 10:53:45 EDT
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         Rob Smyser <smyser@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Arc, X, and emulators (was Sun Arc/Info..PC)
X-To:         gis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu

> 2) You CAN use a PC with an X-emulator to run Arc.  Please contact
> your local ESRI distributor for more information on which emulation
> packages may be right for you.

> Barry Zickuhr
> ESRI Technical Support
> bzickuhr@esri.com

The "see your dealer" stuff in the statement above smacks an *awful*
lot of the
non-support policies of Autodesk.  Bad sign.

> Which PC X-emulators you will recommand to run Arc 6.1 through PC-NFS
or
> PC/TPC network package to SUN?

> Thomas Lee
> GIS Specialist

The question above is innocent enough, though it asks for
recommendations
instead of case-examples and anecdotes.  It isn't clear that
distributors have a
clue about the mix-and-match qualities of trying to mate client-side
PCs/Macs/remote workstations with the server-side of Arcinfo and other
X
applications.

Anne Lilje at CalTech, myself at MIT, and others have been trying to
use
known working X server solutions with Arcinfo 6.* and having a hell of
a time of
it.  I totally understand her tone of frustration.  Not everyone owns
or wants
Suns, which seems to be the stock answer for all incompatibilities.
Fooey.
Part of the problem is that X server solutions that work for
_everything_ else,
fail with Arc.

Here are two instances from my personal experience.  Hummingbird's
eXceedW (a
Microsoft Windows based server) works with everything on the planet
except
Arcinfo.  Turns out from a conversation with a chap in Australia that
you need,
not 8M RAM as I had, but 12M to make it go.  At 4M (that chap's PC),
Arc
apparently fails with informative "out of memory" messages.  At 8M (my
machine)
it just failed with no messages at all.  At 12M (that chap's upgraded
machine),
I am told, it runs great.

Apple's MacX (in a IIsi with 5M real RAM and something like 11M virtual
memory)
would not run Arc6 in the server mode where the Finder is the window
manager.
Running MacX in rooted color window mode, and running the
OpenLookWindowManager
(olwm) from the workstation inside that window, did work.

Now, what should ESRI Tech Support be able to say about these
situations?  I
think they should have at the tip of their little tongues and indeed it
should
be in the bloody System Dependencies manuals that trying to use PC or
Mac X
servers requires both more memory than you ever would have imagined and
forgoing
any window manager other than mwm or olwm (including Windows and
Finder).
That's the bottom line -- under what scenario does the whole _system_
work.
ESRI must _not_ wave off questions about "systems" because "that's what
distributors are for".  Distributors generally aren't on the network,
for one
thing.  They don't seem to do much logging in remotely from
workstations of
different brands.  But that is exactly the world in which Arc must now
function.
ESRI needs to take the responsibility to make it successful.  ESRI
needs to have
an answer, not _the_ answer, about working Arc client-PC X server
setups.
Preferably several.

	Rob Smyser
	Manager, Computer Resource Laboratories
	MIT School of Architecture and Planning
	smyser@athena.mit.edu	617-253-3535

- Rob
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis