August 8, 2008
Development has shifted away from TSclientX and towards the iMKS Virtual Appliance. It's a different approach to remote consoles; you login to appliance and it becomes your gateway to any remote desktop inside the network. If you spend any time playing with remote connectivity solutions it's worth your time to check out!
http://DesktopECHO.com/iMKS
March 30, 2007
A lot of people have been asking about printer redirection. There is a known issue with the native MS RDC client where printer redirection is broken on Intel Macs. TSclientX doesn't do printer redirection either. There's actually an easy way to deal with this if the Windows box and the Mac are on the same subnet. Have a look at this Parallels Blog entry that walks through an installation of the seldom-mentioned but excellent Bonjour for Windows software. Share your printer on the Mac and the Windows box automagically finds it. Be sure to select the "Generic Postscript" driver, regardless of your printer model. Everyhting Just Works. Go figure...
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October 24, 2006 - Version 1.10 ChangeLog can be found at end of this document
--------------------------------------- Installation ---------------------------------------
IMPORTANT: Copy TSclientX into your /Applications folder. This step is *required* - TSclientX will NOT run from an alternate location.
If TSclientX doesn't start, open a terminal and run: "sudo /usr/X11R6/bin/fc-cache" -- This will rebuild X11's fontconfig cache. If you've never used X11 before be patient; it can take a minute or two to fire up on first-run.
--------------------------------------- What is TSclientX? ---------------------------------------
TSclientX is a Windows Terminal Services client for Mac OS X. It appears to be a regular Mac OS application but is in fact an assembly of free software working in concert to provide similar (better?) functionality to the official Remote Desktop Connection from Microsoft. Additionally, there is a nice tidy VNC Viewer built right in as well.
What makes TSclientX interesting compared to other Mac RDP Clients?
- SeamlessRDP is brought to you by Cendio's SeamlessRDP component. It was originally introduced in rdesktop 1.5 and just simply rocks. HINT: Download Cendio's SeamlessRDP component from http://www.cendio.com/seamlessrdp and extract to C:\SeamlessRDP Check the "Fullscreen + SeamlessRDP" box in the Display tab and in the Programs tab under "Program path and filename" type in: "C:\SeamlessRDP\seamlessrdpshell.exe taskmgr.exe" (Without the quotes, you'll get the idea quickly enough) - Multiple instances of TSclientX can be easily started.
- Stability and speed on Intel Macs (and PowerPC Macs for that matter) has been found by many to be superior compared to the official Mac RDP client.
The most interesting ingredients are:
rdesktop 1.5 - http://www.rdesktop.org An open source client for Windows NT Terminal Server and Windows 2000/2003 Terminal Services
tsclient 0.148 - http://www.gnomepro.com/tsclient A frontend for rdesktop and other remote desktop tools
VNC Viewer 4.1.2 - http://realvnc.com Virtual Network Computing
libao 0.86 - http://www.xiph.org/ao A cross platform audio library with CoreAudio support.
The GUI uses an optimized GTK+ build, specifically compiled for TSclientX. Like most Unix-derived software on the Mac, Apple's X11 is required. There are no other prequisites. It will not interfere with MacPorts or Fink installations already on your system.
--------------------------------------- Tips ---------------------------------------
Don't have X11.App in your MacOS 10.4 install? It's on the Tiger install DVD, in /System/Installation/Packages/ You will want to install "X11User.pkg" to get up and running.
To get true full-screen mode you must enable the full-screen feature from X11's preferences menu. When enabled, CMD-OPT-A will switch between X11 and Aqua.
Normally X11 will open an xterm on launch, which can be distracting. To avoid this behavior, create your own X11 ".xinitrc" file. First, In Terminal, type "cp /private/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc" Then edit .xinitrc and remove the line referring to xterm, it's near the bottom of the file.
SeamlessRDP Support is experimental. You need to obtain the Windows-based component from http://www.cendio.com/seamlessrdp. Extract Cendio's binary to C:\SeamlessRDP on the Windows machine. In TSclientX, check the "SeamlessRDP Mode" in the Display tab and enter the program name in the Programs tab. Beware the minimize/maximize buttons aren't all that well behaved.
As-per the official VNC source code, F8 will bring up the VNC Viewer options once the correct password has been entered.
--------------------------------------- Known Issues ---------------------------------------
- The "tsclient" component may get too chatty and reports an "error" on exit. Feel free to ignore the extra verbosity. Hint: Use RDP5 for Windows XP and 2003 to help minimize this.
- Sound support may work really well or may get mad at you and drop the connection. When it works it works really well. Working with rdesktop CVS to fix it in the future!
- For some odd reason, Apple deviated from the VNC protocol specification and as a result RealVNC 4 will not connect to Apple Remote Desktop powered VNC Servers. I'm working on either hacking the RealVNC sources or using a different VNC Viewer. That said, connections to any other VNC servier in the known universe should work fine.
--------------------------------------- ChangeLog ---------------------------------------
September 7, 2006 - Version 1.01 (Intel) - Initial Release
October 15, 2006 - Version 1.03 (PowerPC) - Updated to rdesktop version 1.5 final - Updated libao to 0.86 - Integrated SeamlessRDP
October 24, 2006 - Version 1.10 (Intel/PowerPC) - Unified and rolled-up TSclientX's development for X86/PPC - Various QA fix-ups to make the world a better place - Integrated folder sharing! -- See the "Options" tab
May 9, 2009 - Version 1.12 (Intel/PowerPC)
- OS X 10.5 Compatibility --------------------------------------- Everything Else ---------------------------------------
This package is provided "AS-IS" with no warranty.
Thanks to: - Adam Scheblein and Martin Fuhrer for the work on XDroplets - The authors of TSclientX's open-source components
Questions or feedback? Feel free to contact me:
Daniel Milisic

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