bruss@odin.ucsd.edu (Brian Russ) (12/05/90)
We are looking into porting some of our SunViews applications into X. We could simply rewrite them using Xlib or (preferably for me) InterViews, but then I heard about XView. It's my understanding that XView, in addition to being a full-fledged X toolkit, was designed to facilitate converting SunViews applications to X -- even to the extent that (this is where my memory or understanding may be way off) there exists a translator that converts SunViews calls to XView calls, and that this translator is part of the XView package. Is my understanding at all correct? If so, what are your opinions on XView? If not, are there other ways of "quickly" porting SunViews applications to X? I presume that XView maintains it's own look-and- feel, close to SunView and not close to, say, Motif or OpenLook -- this is not important to us, though we more or less want to stay away from OpenLook. Any help would be appreciated, including XView's availability/price etc. -- Brian Russ CSE Department, UC San Diego ..!sdcsvax!bruss bruss@beowulf.ucsd.edu
cflatter@ZIA.AOC.NRAO.EDU (Chris Flatters) (12/07/90)
Brian Russ writes: > It's my understanding that XView, in addition to being a > full-fledged X toolkit, was designed to facilitate converting > SunViews applications to X -- even to the extent that (this is > where my memory or understanding may be way off) there exists a > translator that converts SunViews calls to XView calls, and that > this translator is part of the XView package. > Is my understanding at all correct? Correct so far. The conversions done by convert_to_xview tend to be incomplete but it is better than having to rewrite the whole application. > If not, are there other ways of "quickly" porting SunViews > applications to X? I presume that XView maintains it's own look-and- > feel, close to SunView and not close to, say, Motif or OpenLook -- > this is not important to us, though we more or less want to stay away > from OpenLook. XView is a certified level-one OPEN LOOK toolkit (and what's wrong with that?). XView is a full featured X Window System toolkit. The amount of knowledge required to build XView applications appears to be lower than for Xt based toolkits (but some may disagree with this). It has the occasional bug but is no worse in that respect than any other toolkit. XView 2 is freely available as source code from xview.ucdavis.edu and expo.lcs.mit.edu. This runs on Sun machines. I gather that patches for DECstations and POWERstations are about to appear RSN, but hadn't shown up last time I looked. I believe that some X archive sites may still have version 1 of XView with the necessary patches for DECstations running Ultrix 3.x. From the looks of the insides, porting XView to a bsd system should present no special difficulties. System V would be a bit more complicated since the notifier package has a marked bsd flavour (most notably it uses Berkeley timer semantics). I assume that porting to System V will get easier as Sun migrate their systems to SVr4. Chris Flatters
tomj@snowking.Eng.Sun.COM (Tom Jacobs) (12/07/90)
In article <14718@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, bruss@odin.ucsd.edu (Brian Russ) writes: |> |> We are looking into porting some of our SunViews applications into |> X. We could simply rewrite them using Xlib or (preferably for me) |> InterViews, but then I heard about XView. It's my understanding that |> XView, in addition to being a full-fledged X toolkit, was designed |> to facilitate converting SunViews applications to X -- even to the |> extent that (this is where my memory or understanding may be way off) |> there exists a translator that converts SunViews calls to XView calls, |> and that this translator is part of the XView package. |> Is my understanding at all correct? If so, what are your opinions |> on XView? If not, are there other ways of "quickly" porting SunViews |> applications to X? I presume that XView maintains it's own look-and- |> feel, close to SunView and not close to, say, Motif or OpenLook -- |> this is not important to us, though we more or less want to stay away |> from OpenLook. |> Any help would be appreciated, including XView's availability/price |> etc. |> |> |> |> -- |> Brian Russ |> CSE Department, UC San Diego |> ..!sdcsvax!bruss bruss@beowulf.ucsd.edu Your understandings are correct. The "translator" is a collection of shell scripts called `convert_to_xview'. There is also a manual that Sun produces named, "XView Version 2 Reference Manual: Converting SunView Applications" (Part No.800-4836-10) that you can get from Sun at a nominal cost. The source to XView 2.0 is on expo.lcs.mit.edu and the cost is $0. There are no licensing or royalty fees. Period. You can get XView libaries in compiled/loadable form for Sun, DEC, IBM and HP. Other non-commercial ports are available too. --- Tom Jacobs ARPA: tomj@Eng.Sun.com Windows & Graphics Software UUCP: sun!tomj Sun Microsystems, Inc.
fgreco@dprg-330.GOVt.shearson.COM (Frank Greco) (12/11/90)
> > We are looking into porting some of our SunViews applications into > X. We could simply rewrite them using Xlib or (preferably for me) > InterViews, but then I heard about XView. It's my understanding that > XView, in addition to being a full-fledged X toolkit, was designed > to facilitate converting SunViews applications to X -- even to the > extent that (this is where my memory or understanding may be way off) > there exists a translator that converts SunViews calls to XView calls, > and that this translator is part of the XView package. > Is my understanding at all correct? Yes. XView is an OPENLOOK-compliant Xlib-based X "toolkit". For applications that do not rely that much on pixrect-based graphics, or perform many low-level Sunview operations, its an extremely easy port from Sunview to XView. I've ported many (high-level) Sunview apps in literally days (one was a one-hour job!). There were several apps that have taken me several months due to the low-level interaction between the app, Sunview/Pixrect and a relational database. Not having any docs on these apps didn't exactly help either ;->. The "convert_to_xview" script (sed-stuff) that comes with the XView distribution does a fairly good job of Sunview-to-Xview conversion. I've found that after running this script, hand-tuning is definitely necessary, since some Sunview attributes are either defunct, rendered moot or just different. convert_to_xview seemed to do a decent job of flagging these down and even inserted C-style comments indicating the area in question. It's not perfect, but for a bunch of sed scripts, it was surprisingly thorough. I've also noticed that for new X application pgmrs, XView is very easy to learn (the attribute-value "little language" method of passing parameters also helps in this regard). The downside is the static subclassing (not really XView's problem, its a C-issue....A C++ interface will allay this problem somewhat). If you're looking for a relatively painless port from Sunview, there's no question, XView is *the* toolkit of choice. > ... I presume that XView maintains it's own look-and- > feel, close to SunView and not close to, say, Motif or OpenLook -- > this is not important to us, though we more or less want to stay away > from OpenLook. Sorry. XView is OPENLOOK-compliant. I'd say mostly Level 1 and about half Level 2 OL compliant...please no flames on precision ;-) >Any help would be appreciated, including XView's availability/price XView src is available on expo.lcs.mit.edu and the pre-built libraries and docs are available with the OpenWindows product from Sun. UCSD may get the OpenWindows src heavily discounted; I'd check with your local Sun sales rep. about this. Frank G.