holtt@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Tim Holt) (02/26/91)
I'm keying up to develop an X based package under Interactive's 386 UNIX and am looking for advice/comments on X windows prototyping packages, both commercial and PD. Any comments from the gallery? Tim Holt - Marine Technician College of Oceanography Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97333-5503 holtt@jacobs.cs.orst.edu (503)737-4447
randy@erik.UUCP (Randy Brown) (02/26/91)
From: uunet!jacobs.cs.orst.edu!holtt (Tim Holt) I'm keying up to develop an X based package under Interactive's 386 UNIX and am looking for advice/comments on X windows prototyping packages, both commercial and PD. Any comments from the gallery? AT&T (the people who sell 6386's and 3B's, not the people who sell Unix source) sells UIMX under the name Open Look Express; it includes a WYSIWYG facility for specifying the widget tree(s), a resource editor for specifying behavior (including callbacks, etc.) and a C interpreter so you can run the actual application while developing the user interface. It is truly marvelous, IMHO. HP sells UIMX (again under their own name, naturally--I think it's Interactive Architect). So far, it only runs on HP, but they also sell the tools to port the result to systems without the (very small) glue library that UIMX uses. One could hope that they might begin selling it for other platforms, as they have recently announced for others of their tools. Or, if one had an HP, one could develop UI code on the HP, or perhaps even functional code, but beware the differences in Motif versions and in the OS, where HP is System V like Interactive, but in an earlier release and with many enhancements. (Buy a POSIX spec, and try to use it...) In the free (not PD) arena, I strongly recommend Wcl. The principal developer (David Smyth, david@devvax.jpl.nasa.gov) uses it to develop Motif programs, so it is well adapted there, but it is basically widget set independent, and I use it for Open Look (xt+, widget-based, not XView) programs. There is a free interactive editor called Dirt (design in real time) that works well with Wcl, but you must adapt it if you are using any except Athena widgets. Not yet having done it, I can't say how much work it would be.