[comp.windows.x] X11 Toolkit Evaluation

taw@inf.rl.ac.uk (Trudy Watson) (11/03/89)

The organisation I work for, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, provides
support for the UK academic engineering research community through a 
programme called EASE, the Engineering Applications Support Environment.  
As part of the programme of work, we will be evaluating toolkits available with
the X window system over the next several months, with the objective of at 
least making some recommendations in the area. We envisage a two-stage process,
with the first stage being mostly a paper exercise of collecting information 
and, hopefully, discarding some of the toolkits at an early stage of the 
evaluation.  The second stage would involve a more extensive evaluation, 
including design and implementation of some "benchmark" exercises, principally 
aimed at finding out whether the toolkit in question will support a range of 
styles of interaction rather than prescribing one or a few.  
The list of toolkits we know about at present is as follows:

	Andrew
	ET++
	Interviews
	Motif
	Open Dialogue
	Xt + Athena widgets
	Xt + Sony widgets
	Xt + Xcu
	Xt + HP widgets
	XUI
	XView
	ObjectWorks
	
Are there any that we have missed?

We are in the process of developing a number of evaluation criteria, and 
so far have come up with the following list:

1. Runs on X11 R3.
2. Available on MIPS, SPARC, 680x0 and VAX like architectures.
3. Already supported.
4. Usable - size, speed and styles of User Interface.
5. ICCCM conformant.
6. Supplier committed to maintenance.
7. Usable from C, not necessarily directly.
8. Affordable (for academics).

Again, any comments on the above would be welcome.  Further, any comments 
on the toolkits themselves would be welcome - both positive and negative.

Please mail comments to me; a summary of the findings will be placed on the 
net after the exercise is over.  It may need to be edited to remove any 
commercially sensitive information, of course.

Please reply to:

Trudy A Watson				
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,		UUCP:	..!mcvax!ukc!rlinf!taw
Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0QX,		JANET:	taw@uk.ac.rl.inf
England.