[cw-discuss] Office2003 running on remote Xvnc causes extremely large X traffic

[Nikita V. Youshchenko]

> Hi,
>
> Nikita V. Youshchenko wrote:
> [...]
>
> > Any hints why there is such huge X traffic, and how to avoid it?
>
> I don't have a definitive answer to the first question. All I can say is
> that Windows applications are not designed for remote displays, simply
> because that's not possible on Windows (I believe that even Terminal
> Server Edition and the likes have a local frame buffer). So they may do
> 'stupid' things like assuming GetPixel() and PutPixel() are cheap (the
> Windows Solitaire is known for that for instance). That's one factor,
> and the second one may be Wine's lack of a proper DIB engine (for the
> specialists).
>
> The workaround would be to run the Windows applications on the same
> machine as the VNC server (in addition to allowing faster communication
> with the X server, it should also enable X's shared memory extensions
> which should decrease the traffic a bit). We've found that this usually
> works pretty well.

Thanks for your reply.

I'm aware that problem goes away if X server becomes local - either by 
running cxoffice apps on the main application server, or by using VNC 
server at the server that actually runs windows apps.
Unfortunately both solutions are very suboptimal for our particular 
network, so I'm looking for ways to fix the issue with running office2003 
on remote X. Since issue is office2003-specific, and shows only on some 
documents, it may - at least theoretically - be a bug that may be fixed. 
Or some office2003-level workaround may exist (e.g. disable one of it's 
endless useless features, or uninstall one of it's useless components).

I will enter a ticket on this issue as soon as cxoffice licensing question 
will be officially resolved in our organization (I hope soon - it's 
already in progress - but there is some unpleasant bureaucracy involved).

I'm willing to work with cxoffice team to resolve this (or at least to find 
exact reason that causes it). I'm an experienced software engeneer, Debian 
Developer, contributed to many opensources projects, etc etc, so I hope 
that communication in this area will lead to some solution.

I guess that first step is to identify, which cxoffice code is emitting 
huge X traffic, and which office2003 component or code is causing the 
request stream that cxoffice code in question is servicing.
Could you please assist on how it could be done?

Nikita