[comp.windows.x] XView CASE tools

rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini) (08/06/89)

The Motif interface generator sounds similar to DEC Windows User Interface
Language (UIL).  They generate procedural code from a declarative description.
No sign of such I've seen so far.  However, XView is so close to SunView
that the commercial SunView CASE tools should be easily adapted to XView.
One of this year's Sun technical notes (May?) describes XView.
I prefer to the other Xt-based systems I've used because it doesn't require
the tedious Initialize-Realize-Manage calls.

david@ics.COM (David B. Lewis) (08/07/89)

In article <4286@portia.Stanford.EDU>, rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini) writes:
> The Motif interface generator sounds similar to DEC Windows User Interface
> Language (UIL).  They generate procedural code from a declarative description.
> No sign of such I've seen so far.  However, XView is so close to SunView
> that the commercial SunView CASE tools should be easily adapted to XView.
> One of this year's Sun technical notes (May?) describes XView.

The Motif User Interface Language is based on Digital's UIL, and much of the
work is being done by Digital. The OSF line
is that converting from DECwindows UIL to Motif UIL is about 95% global
search-and-replace; Digital had been pushing UIL as the best migration
from Ultrix-based DECwindows to Motif.

Sun was demonstrating at Xhibition a point-and-click interface builder
that eventually produced XView code. I'm not sure whether or not there
is an intermediary form that would be manipulable; that is, there is 
undoubtedly some mechanism to read back in an interface under construction,
but I can't be sure that it's human-readable or that it would serve
as a good layout language.
-- 
David B. Lewis david@ics.com ics!david@buita.bu.edu david%ics.UUCP@buita.bu.edu

"An organization designing a system will produce a copy of its own
communication structure." - Melvin Conway