djb@cbosgd.att.com (David J Bryant) (05/01/91)
Submitted-by: djb@cbosgd.att.com (David J Bryant) Shane McCarron (ahby@uinj.UI.ORG) writes (in response to a question from Peter da Silva): Shane:...are portable to a number of platforms (the P1224 [sic] approach is to have a layered API which would work on MS-DOS, OSF/Motif, OPEN LOOK, and Presentation Manager). Peter: How about MacOS/Finder, GEM, and Intuition? Shane: I believe that MacOS/Finder was included. GEM and Intuition were not, as far as I know. Could someone else from 1201 address this? Sure, I'm from P1201.1 (or at least I've recently taken to dwelling there one week per quarter). P1201.1's current working requirements for a Layered API (LAPI) specify that it must be implementable on top of OSF/Motif, Open Look, Macintosh, Windows 3.0 and Presentation Manager. I don't reall mention of GEM or Intuition in any of the meetings I've attended or read minutes from. Note that this requirement wouldn't preclude support of GEM, Intuition or others in any specific P1201.1 standard-conformant implementation. (For example, at least one current LAPI product provides support for curses/terminfo.) Peter: Does your API require the application to manage its own refresh events, or is that stuff hidden far enough in the library that windowing systems that handle that sort of thing through backing store won't lose out? Shane: The whole point of a LaFI API is that the policies of the underlying GUI are hidden from the application developer. That should all sort os the autonomic behaviors that windowing systems have (just as the human body breathes and pumps blood without conscious effort). True. I'm not sure that comp.std.unix is the place to go much into this (wanna come to a P1201.1 meeting?). Naturally there's a fair amount of technical wizardry in managing this kind of thing for five very different underlying windowing system, but this it is indeed the intent, and there are several current products that demonstrate it to be feasible. UUCP: att!cbosgd!djb David Bryant att!cborion!djb AT&T Bell Laboratories INTERNET: djb@cborion.cb.att.com Room 1B-256 djb@cbosgd.att.com 6200 East Broad Street PHONE: (614) 860-4516 Columbus, Ohio 43213 FAX: (614) 868-4302 Volume-Number: Volume 23, Number 56