alan@jane.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Alan S. Mazer) (10/05/88)
I need advice. With the R2 distribution we've got there's a wonderful manual
on Xr11, which I assume is Hewlett-Packard's toolkit (doesn't seem to say that
anywhere explicitly). I'm torn between using the "regular" X 11 toolkit which
doesn't have this nice manual, and the Xr11 toolkit which does. Am I getting
myself locked in somewhere by using this "non-standard" toolkit? I say
non-standard because somehow I doubt that anyone will support this except
Hewlett-Packard. Should I forge ahead with the "standard" toolkit? Any and
all advice is welcome.
-- Alan ..!{ames,cit-vax}!elroy!alan
alan@elroy.jpl.nasa.govmayer@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Niels Mayer) (10/06/88)
In article <9927@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> alan@jane.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Alan S. Mazer) writes: >I need advice. With the R2 distribution we've got there's a wonderful manual >on Xr11, which I assume is Hewlett-Packard's toolkit (doesn't seem to say that >anywhere explicitly). Actually, HP's latest and best contributed toolkit is HP X Widgets (/usr/include/Xw, /usr/lib/libXw.a). This uses the R2 Xt intrinsics, aka, the "regular X 11 toolkit". It comes with reasonable documentation. > I'm torn between using the "regular" X 11 toolkit which >doesn't have this nice manual, and the Xr11 toolkit which does. Am I getting >myself locked in somewhere by using this "non-standard" toolkit? Yes. Use the HP Xwidgets instead. They are quite spiffy (especially when using the 3D feature), and thoroughly blow away the athena widgets and the sony widgets. I believe Xr11 is just for backwards compatibility with people that used HP's Xr toolkit under X10. >non-standard because somehow I doubt that anyone will support this except >Hewlett-Packard. Should I forge ahead with the "standard" toolkit? Any and >all advice is welcome. > Since the HP Xwidgets are based on the Xt intrinsics (which are an X consortium standard), and they are the most functionally complete and most bug-free widget set currently available, it stands to reason that they may become a standard. Since the source to the HP Xwidgets is publically available from expo.lcs.mit.edu and will be included on the R3 tape, I would assume that part of the support for the emerging standard could come from the users of the toolkit, as well as HP. This is the sort of support that has made gnuemacs a standard editor, and X a standard windowing system. Also, consider the fact that you can begin prototyping your X11 applications NOW using the HP Xwidgets, rather than waiting for OpenLook or DECWindows to materialize from their currently vaporous state. -- Niels Mayer, HPLabs. PS: These opinions are my own. I don't work for the division that made the HP Xwidgets; I'm just an X11 applications writer and found HP's Xwidgets to be more useful than any other toolkits i've encountered in X10 and X11. PPS: For an example of a simple HP Xwidgets application, check out expo.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/xwebster.tar.Z
klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) (10/07/88)
Is HP planning to support the XwCC widgets through all future releases
of X and the intrinsics? For some time period (how long)? Or is this
an X11R3 thing only? I'm sure alot of people would like to use them,
but won't unless there is some guarantee that HP won't dump them next
year.
Thanks much for any info.
Ken Lee
Daisy Systems Corp., Interactive Graphics Tools Dept.
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