ahn@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (john.k.ahn) (01/04/90)
Hello, Can anyone point to me to Screen Manager packages available to support Unix terminals? I would like the screen manager to handle menus, forms, windowing, and keyboard entries. The screen manager must work with terminals like VT100, so it rules out GUIs like OpenLook, motif, etc. I have briefly heard about package called C-Scape, but I am not sure if this will do what I want. Even if it does, I don't know how to get it. I know some 4-GL packages will also do what I want. However, most 4-GLs are tied to a database system and I don't really want to get a whole database system just to do screen management. In other words, I need something more powerful than curses, but less than a 4-GL based on a DBMS. Any pointers and/or your experience with any such packages will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, John K. Ahn AT&T Bell Laboratories jahn@homxc.ATT.COM There is no way I can be speaking on behalf of AT&T, since it has no idea what I am doing here.
jgd@rsiatl.UUCP (John G. De Armond) (02/23/90)
>> Can anyone point to me to Screen Manager packages available to support >> Unix terminals? I would like the screen manager to handle menus, >> forms, windowing, and keyboard entries. The screen manager must work >> with terminals like VT100, so it rules out GUIs like OpenLook, motif, etc. > >Thanks to all who responded. Some of the suggestions (in no particular >order) were: > >Chris McCoy at Purdue University: > C-scape from Oakland Group (800) 233-3733 > Vermont Views from Vermont Creative Software (800) 848-1248 > I've got extensive experience with both products in the DOS world and have looked into them for unix. Here's the poop. C-scape is a pretty good package for DOS. It has a wide variety of functionality at several different levels. It is moderately fast but generates large programs. Oakland group tends to be a bit flakey. I was a beta tester for release 3.0. I got the docs for the product and empty disk packs. About 2 weeks later, and before I ever got the disks, they had the product on the market. Their screen generator is pretty poor. I say that not having seen the latest and greatest from them, but I've learned to let others get bloodied on new stuff from them. They do have a unix product but it has 2 problems. First and foremost, they did not use curses but instead implemented their own hokey "terminfo". If you want to drive much more than a VT-100, you gotta write your own cscape terminfo files. No utility is supplied to convert standard terminfo files. The second problem is cost. They seem to think that the guy sitting on a unix system is gonna pay a LOT more for a tool than for his PC sitting next to it. By a LOT, I mean thousands. Plus the license terms claim that payment must be made for each new user on the development system. I have flamed them in writing several times but they're too hard headed to listen. Pretty much the same goes for Vermont Views. The screen generator is much better and it is faster but less capable. Again, they went their own way with terminal control PLUS they want an astronomical price for Unix source - $7000 last time I checked. C-scape could probably be adapted pretty easily to curses because they use the concept of a driver structure such that the entire library interfaces with the underlying system at only one point and through a structure of function pointers. Hope that helps. John
mark@DRD.Com (Mark Lawrence) (04/13/90)
jgd@rsiatl.UUCP (John G. De Armond) wrote: } > Vermont Views from Vermont Creative Software (800) 848-1248 [...] } Pretty much the same goes for Vermont Views. The screen generator is much } better and it is faster but less capable. Again, they went their own way } with terminal control PLUS they want an astronomical price for Unix } source - $7000 last time I checked. We didn't pay that. Blind source is a whole lot cheaper. Since we are a Dos/Unix/Vms licensee, we purchased the cheap source license for DOS and bought blind source for Unix (don't think it was much over $1500 if that). When we need to dig into the innards, we go look at the DOS source. They are 95% or so the same. -- mark@DRD.Com {uunet,rutgers}!drd!mark (918)743-3013