| 1 | <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
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| 2 | <html>
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| 3 | <head>
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| 4 | <meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html;CHARSET=iso-8859-1">
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| 5 | <meta name="keywords" content="Virtual Screen, Open Source, Software" />
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| 6 | <meta name="description" content="Mouse and Keyboard Sharing" />
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| 7 | <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="synergy.css" media="screen" />
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| 8 | <title>Synergy Roadmap</title>
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| 9 | </head>
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| 10 | <body class="main">
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| 11 | <p>
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| 12 | </p><h3>Synergy Roadmap</h3><p>
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| 13 | </p><p>
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| 14 | This page describes the planned development of Synergy. There are
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| 15 | no dates or deadlines. Instead, you'll find the features to come
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| 16 | and the rough order they'll arrive.
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| 17 | </p><p>
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| 18 | </p><h4>Short term</h4><p>
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| 19 | </p><p>
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| 20 | Synergy should work seamlessly. When it works correctly, it works
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| 21 | transparently so you don't even think about it. When it breaks,
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| 22 | you're forced out of the illusion of a unified desktop. The first
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| 23 | priority is fixing those bugs that break the illusion.
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| 24 | </p><p>
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| 25 | Some of these bugs are pretty minor and some people would rather
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| 26 | have new features first. But I'd rather fix the current
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| 27 | foundation before building on it. That's not to say features
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| 28 | won't get added until after bug fixes; sometimes it's just too
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| 29 | tempting to code up a feature.
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| 30 | </p><p>
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| 31 | The highest priority feature is currently splitting synergy into
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| 32 | front-ends and a back-end. The back-end does the real work. The
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| 33 | front-ends are console, GUI, or background applications that
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| 34 | communicate with the back-end, either controlling it or receiving
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| 35 | notifications from it.
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| 36 | </p><p>
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| 37 | On win32, there'd be a front-end for the tray icon and a dialog to
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| 38 | start, stop, and control the back-end. OS X and X11 would have
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| 39 | similar front-ends. Splitting out the front-end has the added
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| 40 | benefit on X11 of keeping the back-end totally independent of
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| 41 | choice of GUI toolkit (KDE, Gnome, etc.)
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| 42 | </p><p>
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| 43 | One can also imagine a front-end that does nothing but put monitors
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| 44 | into power-saving mode when the cursor is not on them. If you have
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| 45 | one monitor auto-senses two inputs, this would automatically switch
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| 46 | the display when you move the cursor to one screen or another.
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| 47 | </p><p>
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| 48 | </p><h4>Medium term</h4><p>
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| 49 | </p><p>
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| 50 | Some features fit well into Synergy's current design and may simply
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| 51 | enhance it's current capabilities.
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| 52 | </p><p>
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| 53 | <ul>
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| 54 | <li>Configurable hot key to pop up a screen switch menu
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| 55 | <li>Configure screen saver synchronization on or off
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| 56 | <li>Graphical interface configuration and control on all platforms
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| 57 | <li>Graphical status feedback on all platforms
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| 58 | <li>More supported clipboard formats (particularly rich text)
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| 59 | </ul>
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| 60 | </p><p>
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| 61 | A popup menu would be new for Synergy, which currently doesn't have
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| 62 | to do any drawing. That opens up many possibilities. Ideally,
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| 63 | front-ends request hot keys from the back-end and then tell the back
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| 64 | end what to do when they're invoked. This keeps the back-end
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| 65 | independent of the user interface.
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| 66 | </p><p>
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| 67 | </p><h4>Long term</h4><p>
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| 68 | </p><p>
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| 69 | Two features stand out as long term goals:
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| 70 | </p><p>
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| 71 | <ul>
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| 72 | <li>Support <span class="arg">N</span> computers on
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| 73 | <span class="arg">M</span> monitors
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| 74 | <li>Drag and drop across computers
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| 75 | </ul>
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| 76 | </p><p>
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| 77 | The first feature means sharing a monitor or monitors the way the
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| 78 | keyboard and mouse are shared. With this, Synergy would be a full
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| 79 | KVM solution. Not only would it support a few computers sharing
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| 80 | one screen (still using the mouse to roll from one screen to
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| 81 | another), but it should also support dozens of computers to provide
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| 82 | a solution for server farm administrators. In this capacity, it
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| 83 | may need to support text (as opposed to bitmap graphics) screens.
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| 84 | </p><p>
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| 85 | The second feature would enhance the unified desktop illusion. It
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| 86 | would make it possible to drag a file and possibly other objects
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| 87 | to another screen. The object would be copied (or moved). I expect
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| 88 | this to be a very tricky feature.
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| 89 | </p>
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| 90 | </body>
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| 91 |
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| 92 | </html>
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