[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Wishlist: multiple users on one client (PR#707)

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Feb 23, 2001 at 06:23:04AM -0800, zuluone@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Submission from: (NULL) (195.188.141.61)
> 
> Since many people (inc. me) play Freeciv on their local box, wouldn't it be 
> nice
> to have better support for more than one player on one computer? A nice point
> would be password-protected connections on one client.

Wouldn't it be be better to support password protected connections
without making it specific to where the server or clients are running?

> In addition would be
> popup windows showing windowmanager hints to appear in front of their owner. I
> use Enlightenment and have up to three clients open at once on virtual 
> desktops,
> but sometimes see other players' messages, science reports, arrival of 
> caravans
> etc.

Can you explain how you do this?  Are different players actually
playing on the same GUI session?  This would only happen if you
physically share the keyboard and use some sort of 'hotseat' mode.
Freeciv doesn't really support this, because moves performed by
different players are processed asynchronously as they come in.
What you point out is imperfect support for running multiple clients
within the same GUI session.  I don't think anyone ever expected
Freeciv to be used in this way, escept for testing purposes.
Different users are expected to run clients on separate GUI sessions.
Freeciv wasn't developed to run on a single user, single session OS.

> And before anyone says "Get another box and network them,"

No, just use the capabilities of a multisession GUI system, such as X.

There are various ways to run multiple X sessions at the same time,
even on the same monitor and keyboard, even as the same user.
One way is to run multiple copies of X, another is to use Xnest.

-- 
Reinier