SAVCHENKO@cgi.COM (Alex) (11/21/90)
Hi all, I'm looking for someone who has working experience with XVT from XVT Software Inc. (former API) and is willing to share it with me. Does this toolkit really provide portability across windowing systems? (I'm particulary interested in MS-Windows/X-Motif) Is it good toolkit at all? What do you think is the best option for anyone who is interested in writing user interface code portable across different windowng systems? Thank you in advance, - alex. ========================== Alex Savchenko, Carnegie Group Inc. 5 PPG Place, Pittsburgh, PA 15222 tel: (412)642-6811x511 e-mail: "savchenko@cgi.com" ==========================
dow@PRESTO.IG.COM (Christopher Dow) (11/27/90)
I think that the major issue here is that there are no widgets in XVT and no corresponding entity. As I said before, the toolkit is very much like the Mac in that, for the most part, it is fairly low-level, and if there are any 'extras' they, too have been written using XVT, not the native toolkit. As far as 'pushing the envelope', it just turns out that there are things available in Motif or the Athena Widgets that you have to write yourself in XVT, but this can be done. The only thing in my application that is Motif-specific is popup menus. This is still better than writing your user interface twice. The main thing is that if you need your market increased because no one platform can support your development costs, then you have to use something like XVT, and there isn't anything else that exists TODAY that is like XVT. Also, the OpenLook version is in late Alpha, and will be available for general distribution in the 1st quarter of '91. So, remove that from the list I posted earlier. (Who wants OpenLook, anyway?). In summary, I guess I'm saying that I have an extremely sophisticated user interface designed to manage litterally thousands of data objects and tens of megabytes of data, and, while using XVT, I haven't had to compromise at all between the design and the implementation. Maybe if I were using Motif directly, I would have written less code, but still not so much less that it would have been easier to write the application twice, and since I have to support three platforms, that is very important. Chris Dow IntelliGenetics Software Engineer 700 East El Camino Real icbmnet: 37 22' 39" N, 122 3' 32" W Mountain View, Ca. 94040 dow@presto.ig.com (415) 962-7320