DAN@YKTVMV.BITNET (07/21/89)
IBM has published a book which may be helpful to beginning X programers. IBM AIX X-Windows Programming Guide Marcus Bennett Maria P. Camblor Neils Christiansen IBM publication number GG24-3382 Price $6.85 341 pages, 33 C programs, 400k tar file. Ordering it might be a problem. There are several approaches. Your local IBM salesman should be able to get it. Some bookstores know how to order stuff from IBM. There is currently no magic address I can give you to order it yourself. I am told that "they" are working on making it easier for people to order IBM publications (maybe by the end of the year). The source code on diskettes are also available from your IBM salesman. I am working on getting the lawyers to sign off on putting the source on contrib. The examples work on my RT but there are no guarentees that they are portable to all other systems without changes. On RT's you must have X11 CorrSVC 1719 or later. This upgrades the version 2 code shipped originally to version 3. Abstract: This publication is a beginner's guide to X-Windows programming, covering the lowest level programming interface (Xlib) as well as the X Toolkits. A variety of complete examples, written in the C language, are provided to illustrate the different topics under discussion. The programming interfaces to the IBM AIX X-Windows enable a programmer to develop applications with advanced user interface tools based on windows to display information and retrieve user input on bitmapped displays, with network transparency. These applications will run without changes on the IBM RT and IBM PS/2 under the IBM AIX Operating System. The X Toolkits simplify the process of application writing by providing a number of widgets to implement visual objects like command buttons, menus, dialog boxes, and other common features for the users. There are several X Toolkits available. One of them, the Athena X Toolkit, is provided as an example with the IBM AIX X-Windows. The procedures and conventions provided by the X Toolkit Intrinsics will allow you to develp your own X Toolkit, should you need to. This publication will help you create a comfortable working enviroment to practice programming with X-Windows, at both the Xlib and the X Toolkit levels. It is not intended as a complete refereence but as a way of getting started from the most basic concepts to an intermediate degree of expertise, in a world that offers you powerful tools for the presentation side of your applications. Walt Daniels IBM Research (Comments to the authors can be sent though me. I have no other interest in the book other than being a user.)
DAN@YKTVMV.BITNET (08/07/89)
>Hello, > I am wondering if you have any paper/document on X describing advantages > and what X can offer in the future. > Thanks, > Anurag Jain The avantages of X have been described in several papers in the open literature. Bibliographies get published on xpert occationally. Look in Usenix proceedings and SigGraph. As for the future, that is controlled by the X consortium. Watch this forum or some of the more specialized ones dealing with the issues and watch the future get decided. The manufacturers are only part of the input on future directions. Walt Daniels