Assuming that there was a VNC client implemented, you could simply start a VNC server on your laptop, then connect to it from the RPi that is connected to the display (driven by the hypothetical VNC client).

The server could provide access to either the main display that you see on your laptop panel (using x11vnc) or a separate, "hidden" display (using vncserver) which likely would make more sense as you can more easily configure it to suit the monochrome display by choosing a minimal window manager and use an arbitrary pixel size for the desktop.

Another option is to run the VNC server on the RPi too, in which case you could start individual programs from other hosts - such as your laptop - via SSH + X forwarding, by running ssh -X <my_laptop> <someprog> in the simplest case, after which you'd see the process start on the laptop, but it would draw on the VNC display over the network.

To simulate a scenario where the e-ink is another display on your laptop, you'd need to:

run a VNC server on the laptop
run a VNC client on the RPi, connected to the laptop's server
set up some way to give input to the VNC server from the laptop
- I haven't used it, but Synergy might work for this, ie. you'd drag your mouse over the screen border and magically it enters the VNC display, which is hosted by the laptop but rendered by the RPi
- or, just start another client on the laptop and interact with it that way - display would update on both the laptop and the e-ink, and this might be good enough if you mostly need to see something there and not click around

Not sure of all the practicalities yet, but that's the rough idea. The biggest benefit of the VNC client would in any case be the fact that there's no need to mess with terminal stuff or other specifics, since we can just let the programs draw pixels as they would normally, while refreshing the e-ink in a smart way.

Beyond raspberry pi? #23

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