[Paraview] Paraview render servers and X

[Joel Welling]

Hi folks;
  I'm trying to set up a strange Paraview client-server configuration in which 
render servers running under MPI use Chromium to draw to the displays of 
separate rendering service machines.  (Yes, I know; I can use mesa to do the 
rendering off-screen on the render server hosts.  Just humor me for a minute). 
 The Paraview render servers all need an X connection to their respective 
rendering service machines, even though they don't run X widgets.  As far as I 
can tell, the X DISPLAY environment variable is only used in 
vtkXOpenGLRenderWindow, where it sets up certain window connection bits that 
are then used with glX calls to set up the actual GL rendering context.
  Does a Paraview render server do anything with X other than set up the GL 
context using glX calls?  If not, I can modify vtkXOpenGLRenderWindow to use 
the corresponding Chromium calls to set up the glX context and avoid touching 
the X display per se.  If X is used for something else, like reading back from 
the window or communicating redraw events to the render servers, that approach 
is pretty hopeless and I'll have to figure out some other solution.  Has 
anyone already created a vtkCrOpenGLRenderWindow class which will do this job?
  Sorry to ask such an open-ended question.  Chromium I can handle, but I'm 
very naive about vtk internals.

Thanks,
-Joel
 welling at psc.edu