beamlab@hscfvax.UUCP (04/14/87)
I am a bit confused about X toolkits, and would appreciate some advice from the xperts. As I understand it, the recently released preliminary Xtool kit is designed to utilize "the best of the X10R4 toolkits" and also present to the programmer (and user) a standardized library/interface that will span Version 10 and Version 11. (I realize that the Xtool release will be shortly updated to conform more closely to V11 protocols.) If this is the case, then it would seem that using Xtool is the only sensible thing to do between now and widespread availibility of V11. Is this in fact the case ? Am I missing something ? Is the performance of Xtool crippled by the need to emulate V11 in V10 ? How good are the "tools" in the toolbox ? How transparent will the transition to V11 be ? Sorry for all the ???'s, but I'd love to hear some opinions from those of you who have experimented with Xtools. BTW, if anyone out there is a Masscomp user and has managed to upgrade from Masscomp's 10R2 port to 10R4, I'd love to hear from you. I can't try the tools till I upgrade. Thanks. David McCallie Children's Hospital / Boston ...harvard!hscfvax!dpm dpm%hscfvax@harvard.harvard.edu
swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick) (04/14/87)
The real answer is that you should choose from the available toolkits the one that best addresses your individual needs at the moment and assume that you are on your own (i.e. no support for the toolkit). The Xtoolkit represents one consensus opinion on how a user interface toolkit for X should be built, and it happens to be one of the two or three major toolkit projects we are supporting here at Project Athena. Because it is an attempt at a consensus, the interfaces and the implementation are guaranteed to change for a period of time. As I said, assume no support for any particular snapshot set of bits. The Xtoolkit is very likely to be the first toolkit to be released with X version 11, if early porting is of concern to you. Porting between a March snapshot of the Xtoolkit and any later snapshot should be easier than porting from an entirely different toolkit, but will not be transparent. It is not our experience that Xtool is overly crippled by lack of X11 features, so I would not be hesitant to use it on that respect except perhaps for some particularly demanding applications. One large difference that _will_ have varying degrees of impact is the minimalist approach taken to the visible characteristics of the widgets themselves. Xtool has not had the benefit of the long hours of work that have obviously gone into the aesthetics of Sx and X-ray. You will need to decide for yourself how important each of these factors is. -Ralph