mayer@hplabs.hpl.hp.com (Niels Mayer) (05/14/91)
Archive-name: x11/interface-builder/winterp/1991-05-13 Archive-directory: export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/winterp/ [18.30.0.238] Original-posting-by: mayer@hplabs.hpl.hp.com (Niels Mayer) Original-subject: Re: contrib from interex tape available Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) In article <12873@dog.ee.lbl.gov> milburn@me10.lbl.gov (John Milburn) writes: >The package contributed by HP to to the Interex exchange tape is >available via anonymous ftp from me10.lbl.gov (128.3.128.110). Be >sure to use binary mode. (rs :-)) > ... >I don't know what wacco, dld and winterp do. > As the author, I happen to know what WINTERP does: ============================================================================== WINTERP: An object-oriented rapid prototyping, development and delivery environment for building user-customizable applications with the OSF/Motif UI Toolkit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WINTERP is a Widget INTERPreter, an application development environment enabling rapid prototyping of graphical user-interfaces (GUI) through the interactive programmatic manipulation of user interface objects and their attached actions. The interpreter, based on David Betz's XLISP, provides an interface to the X11 toolkit Intrinsics (Xtk), the OSF/Motif widget set, primitives for collecting data from UN*X processes, and facilities for interacting with other UN*X processes. WINTERP thus supports rapid prototyping of GUI-based applications by allowing the user to interactively change both the UI appearance and application functionality. These features make WINTERP a good tool for learning and experimenting with the capabilities of the OSF/Motif UI toolkit, allowing UI designers to more easily play "what if" games with different interface styles. WINTERP is also an excellent platform for delivering extensible or customizable applications. By embedding a small, efficient language interpreter with UI primitives within the delivered application, users and system integrators can tailor the static and dynamic layout of the UI, UI-to-application dialogue, and application functionality. WINTERP's use of a real programming language for customization allows WINTERP-based applications to be much more flexible than applications using customization schemes provided by the X resource database, Brunecky&Smythe's Widget Creation Library (WCL), or OSF/Motif's UIL (user interface language). An environment similar to WINTERP's already exists in the Gnu-Emacs text editor -- WINTERP was strongly influenced by Gnu-Emacs' successful design. In Gnu-Emacs, a mini-Lisp interpreter is used to extend the editor to provide text-browser style interfaces to a number of UN*X applications (e.g. e-mail user agents, directory browsers, debuggers, etc). Whereas Emacs-Lisp enables the creation of new applications by tying together C-implemented primitives operating on text-buffer UI objects, WINTERP-Lisp ties together operations on graphical UI objects implemented by the Motif widgets. Both achieve a high degree of customizability that is common for systems implemented in Lisp, while still attaining the speed of execution and (relatively) small size associated with C-implemented applications. Other features: * WINTERP is free software -- available via anonymous ftp from export.lcs.mit.edu. * Portable -- runs without porting on many Unix systems. * Interface to gnuemacs' lisp-mode allows code to be developed and tested without leaving the editor; * Built-in RPC mechanism for inter-application communications; * XLISP provides a simple Smalltalk-like object system. * OSF/Motif widgets are real XLISP objects -- widgets can be specialized via subclassing, methods added or altered, etc. * Automatic storage management (via garbage collection) of Motif/Xt/X data. * Contains facilities for "direct manipulation" of UI components; You may obtain the latest released version of the WINTERP source, documentation, and examples via anonymous ftp from internet host export.lcs.mit.edu (18.30.0.238): in directory contrib/winterp you will find the compress(1)'d tar(1) file winterp-???.tar.Z. (??? represents the version number). Slides, papers and further documentation can be found in directory contrib/winterp/papers. There is also a mailing list for WINTERP-related announcements and discussions. To get added to the list, send mail to winterp-request%hplnpm@hplabs.hp.com or hplabs!hplnpm!winterp-request. For discussions about XLISP, see the USENET newsgroup comp.lang.lisp.x. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- mayer@hplabs.hp.com Human-Computer Interaction Department Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Palo Alto, CA. * -- comp.archives file verification export.lcs.mit.edu total 1400 drwxrwxrwx 2 ftp 512 May 10 01:54 binaries -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 1414493 Apr 22 09:44 winterp-1.12.tar.Z -rw-rw-rw- 1 ftp 10335 Apr 22 09:36 winterp-1.12.README drwxrwxrwx 2 ftp 512 Nov 20 02:26 xlisp drwxrwxrwx 2 ftp 512 Nov 17 00:30 papers found winterp ok export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/winterp/