jrg@Apple.COM (John R. Galloway) (05/25/88)
In writing applications for X10.4 using the Xtlib toolkit (I assume that much of this will hold true for X11 as well) I found one of the more tedious aspects to be setting up all the arg lists and making all the XtCreate..XtSet... etc. calls just to get things set up. So what about an X-Application-aSStiant that allows the graphical aspects of an application to be specified graphically. This would be a sort of paint like utility, but with very limited abilities. Place buttons, labels, specify border thicknesses, fonts, call back routine names, etc. the output would be (C or other) language fragments (modules? routines? include files?). A) How useful do you think such would be? In just beginning to look at the X11 docs it has become clear that I have not been using the resource data base nearly enough (if at all). If you write your application "correctly" would such an assistant still be useful? B) Just how far could this notion be taken? C) Is anyone already working on such a project? -- apple!jrg John R. Galloway, Jr. contract programmer, San Jose, Ca These are my views, NOT Apple's, I am a GUEST here, not an employee!!
RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) (05/26/88)
There was a video tape of a prototype UI editor done a DEC by a summer student shown at the January X conference. As I recall, two other talks also touched on editors and/or specification languages. Yes, such a thing is clearly useful.