🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JAN.96Jan4144902@cora.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>,
Jan Vorbrueggen <jan@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de> wrote:

>   What if GIF files didn't work between machines?  Or what about tar files?
>
>Irrelevant. These formats are expressly designed for interchange, and they
>carry a hefty performance penalty because of it. The X protocol is another
>example. For almost all other cases, the equivalent of a core dump is just
>fine. 

The X protocol allows the client to choose a byte order, and the
standard X library sends binary structures over the net (it took
a while to get this right on the Cray, but C compilers on most
systems make it easy to create a data structure that corresponds
to the X protocol byte stream).  The server swaps bytes only if
it has a different byte order.  Usually this is not the case (the
server is on the same machine or both client and server are the
same type of hardware).

-- 
    John Carr (jfc@mit.edu)