Introduction

This chapter describes the characteristics of HP PEXlib programs as they run on HP workstations. The PEX protocol defines the way information is exchanged between clients and servers. Clients send encoded requests to the PEX server and the server generates events, replies, and errors.

One of the key enhancements that HP has made in the area of client/server communications is enabling HP PEXlib to control and select the protocol method of operation that provides the best rendering performance. The selection and use of one particular method, and consequently the performance of your system, is dependent upon criteria that are described in the next section of this chapter.

This chapter also includes information about how you can customize the HP workstation clients by setting an operating method, particular colormap, or the use of color recovery all through setting environment variables.

Note that for some environment variables, the implementation details you'll need for using them are found in later chapters because they provide added graphics functionality.

	NOTE: If you are installing HP PEX, it is essential that you pass along this chapter to those who will be programming with HP PEXlib or using the PEXlib application.

Before you begin using the HP PEX product, it is important to check on-line files. You will find time-critical information in the HP PEX product Release Notes file ReleaseNotes (10.0_Rel_Notes on HP-UX 10.0) in the 〈rel-notes〉^[7] directory.

This file contains important information about the HP PEX product that was not available in time for printing the hardcopy documentation. This includes information about utility programs that conveniently perform common operations and which aid interoperability of programs. Also look in the README files that may be found in the various directories and subdirectories of the HP PEX product.