(1) you log into your basic shell account and start up the intermediate server
(2) you start up the little WWW client on the Zoomer
(3) the Zoomer WWW client makes simple URL requests to the intermediate server
(4) the intermediate server makes the real networking connections, much like a
proxy server (hint: get CERN's common code library)
(5) data retrieved by the intermediate server is sent back to the Zoomer client
Data sent to the Zoomer client could be preprocessed by the intermediate server
in a variety of ways which might be helpful:
- compression, to keep the bandwidth up
- conversion of JPEGs and GIFs into a common format more readily displayed on
the small monochrome Zoomer display
- imagemaps would likely need some preprocessing
- maybe there's even some advantage to preprocessing basic HTML? especially
forms, tables, etc.
One might be able to create a text-only WWW client of this kind using the new
version to IZL (with it's serial comms support). I don't know if it would be
able to handle the graphics part. If not, maybe next version?
BTW, someone did something similar to this for the Newton. It was soon after
the Newton was released, and I think the work was done in Germany somewhere. I
don't recall how well it all turned out.
-- -Brian Smithson brian@eit.com Enterprise Integration Technologies +1 415 617 8009 800 El Camino Real FAX +1 415 462 6369 Menlo Park, CA 94025 URL: http://www.eit.com/