farmer@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu (Gary Farmer) (12/15/90)
I am studying the Widget Creation Library, which allows the developer to save
the interface specification in a resource file. The basic philosophy is:
1. separate the user interface from the application
2. read the user interface specification from a resource file, avoiding
recompilation.
The Design in Real Time (DIRT) User Interface Management System takes advantage
of this philosophy. DIRT currently contains the Athena and UKC widget sets and
is extensible to contain other widget sets. However, I do not know if it is
extensible to C++ widgets.
1. Is DIRT widget set extensible to C++ widgets?
2. Is DIRT widget set extensible to InterViews interactors?
3. Are there any known drop-and-drag User Interface Builders or Management
Systems that use C++ widgets?
4. Does anyone know the differences between the Solbourne and University of
Lowell C++ wrappers for Motif widgets?
I have been trying to get on the dirt-user mailing list, but my requests have
not gotten through. Is the correct name dirt-user, dirt-users, dirt.users, or
something else?
Thank you in advance,
Gary Farmer
farmer@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edurlh2@ukc.ac.uk (R.L.Hesketh) (12/15/90)
In article <FARMER.90Dec14133152@titan.titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu> farmer@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu (Gary Farmer) writes: >The Design in Real Time (DIRT) User Interface Management System >takes advantage >of this philosophy. DIRT currently contains the Athena and UKC widget sets >and >is extensible to contain other widget sets. However, I do not know if it is >extensible to C++ widgets. I don't claim Dirt is a UIMS .. its a UI Builder and no where near full UIMS status 8-). However you are correct in saying that it can (and is) being extended to include other widget classes .. most notably at the moment the Motif and OpenLook widget sets. The 2-D HP widget set is already supported, you just need to define HP_WIDGETS at compile time. >1. Is DIRT widget set extensible to C++ widgets? I really doubt it. What do you really mean by C++ widgets anyway? C++ wrappers to Xt Intrinsic widgets or user interface objects that are written in C++ manipulated by routines in a base class? >2. Is DIRT widget set extensible to InterViews interactors? Dirt works only with the Xt Toolkit Intrinsics at the moment. The ideas used in Dirt are, I believe, usable by any object-oriented (not merely object based) user interface toolkit. It really requires only the following things to be supported by the O-O toolkit: 1) Runtime generic creation/deletion of objects. One (or a known limited number) routine can be called with the class of object required and it creates an instance of that class. Xt has two; one for normal widgets/objects and one for shells .. although the one for shells is a thin layer on top of the general XtCreateWidget() call. 2) Runtime generic attribute retrieval and setting. Basically the SetValues/GetValues interface of the Xt Intrinsics. Any attribute which can be set or examined should be accessable by one standard interface. 3) Attribute type conversion facilities. All attributes/resources saved by Dirt are in a string format used in resource databases. A general conversion facility (XtConvertAndStore()) is required to allow conversion between types .. with the appropriate converters. Dirt adds a whole set of converters to convert from a type back into a String to allowing saving of resource settings. These three functions allow any widget class written for the Xt Intrinsics to be incorporated into Dirt, normally without any additions to Dirt's user interface. The rest of Dirt just presents a direct-manipulation interface or the editing of resources/attributes. Producing an InterViews version of Dirt should be possible if InterViews supports the above 3 functions. I haven't looked deeply enough at InterViews to see if its architecture allows this .. however ... >3. Are there any known drop-and-drag User Interface Builders or Management > Systems that use C++ widgets? I believe there may be something for InterViews that was created using an "editor-editor" called Unidraw developed by John Vlissides at Stanford. There are papers describing both Unidraw and Solbourne's OI Toolkit in the Proceedings of the 4th Annual X Technical Conference (1990). >4. Does anyone know the differences between the Solbourne and University of > Lowell C++ wrappers for Motif widgets? If you are talking about Solbourne's OI Toolkit then it is completely different to Lowell's wrappers. From what I have read, the OI Toolkit is a complete C++ implementation of both Motif and OpenLook GUI styles choosable at runtime no less. >I have been trying to get on the dirt-user mailing list, but my requests have >not gotten through. Is the correct name dirt-user, dirt-users, dirt.users, or >something else? To get on, the name is "dirt-users-request@ukc.ac.uk". You have got through to me but I have been unable to reply to you because of mailer problems and my mail guru is in Columbia for Christmas (don't ask!). I'll try to get back to you in the New Year. Richard Hesketh Computing Officer, Computing Lab., University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 227 764000 ext 7620/7590 Fax: +44 227 762811