alen@crash.cts.com (Alen Shapiro) (01/02/90)
This must be a naive question but here goes anyway... I'm trying to write a portable application that is window based. Obvious choice for the window layer is X-windows, it seems that Motif has gained much favour as the interface definition of choice given portability is a key issue and dealing with lower-level x-windows is fraught with danger (sinister background music goes here...). I'd like to run the application on Sun, IBM-PC/PS, Mac. Now here's the rub, the mac has a windowing system of its own, client (not server) X-windows does not seem likely to appear soon - and even if it did there may not be many developers that would pick it over the ROM-based windowing facility already existing on the mac (low demand). However there may be developers (like me) who want to write portable windowing code for many presentation engines and a Motif hosted on top of the MAC ROM may be a good idea for that. Anyone doing this? anyone likely to? any reasons why this is a stupid idea? --alen the Lisa slayer (it's a long story) ...alen%shappy.uucp@crash.cts.com (a mac+ uucp host - what a concept!!) ...alen@crash.cts.com
klee@gilroy.pa.dec.com (Ken Lee) (01/03/90)
In article <1025@crash.cts.com>, alen@crash.cts.com (Alen Shapiro) writes: > I'd like to run the application > on Sun, IBM-PC/PS, Mac. Various people are trying to solve this problem. The two popular approaches are rewriting parts of your program for each platform (not just the user interface section, there are bound to be OS differences, etc.) and writing some sort of portability layer that provides the same functionality on several platforms. There is a lot of merit in either approach. The first approach lets you take maximum advantage of the performance and functionality of each platform, but you do pay a penalty in development time. The second approach decreases development time if you can share the portability layer among several applications, but you do pay a penalty in performance and functionality. I have heard of some commercial portability packages, but haven't tried any of them. I suspect that none will be complete enough for any significant project, but that do provide a starting place. Ken Lee DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif. Internet: klee@decwrl.dec.com uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee