[comp.windows.ms] Porting Apps between X and MSWindows

doug@neptune.iex.com (Doug Luecke) (05/10/91)

I know this has been tossed around before, but my company has several X
applications (OLIT/OI/Motif) that we would like to port to MSW3.0 in order
to support users that already have PCs/Windows on their desks.  In addition,
we'd like to take some Windows Apps and have them run under X along with our
high powered apps.  The company I work for is a custom contract software
house, not a mass market product developer.

I have kicked around the idea of building an MSW3.0 -> X library for the UNIX
side and an X -> MSW3.0 library for the DOS side for quite a while, and had
dismissed it because I figured the differences between the two were too great
as to not be a feasible thing to do.  However, with the rumors or Xvt and
other look and feel independent GUI libraries, I'm wondering if it maybe is a
reasonable thing to do.

- Does Xvt already provide the capabilities that I'd need, or will it soon?
  If so, what are/will be its limitations?  I've heard that it provides an
  intersection (or Least Common Subset) of the capabilities of the various
  GUIs that it supports.  Can I extend the library to implement features
  that are not present in the supplied library?

- How different are the underlying APIs, and how difficult would it be to
  build the above mentioned libraries for in-house use?  I'm very familiar
  with the X side of things, but a relative newcomer to Windows.  I would
  assume that for 80-90% of the X calls, there is an equivalent (although
  syntactically different) Windows call, and vice versa.  The rest
  (connection to display, multitasking issues, etc) should be relatively
  straightforward, no?  Why not?  Anyone already building one of these
  they'd be willing to share/sell/whatever?

- I've heard many rave reviews about the Windows Help mechanism, which we
  would definitely want to implement for those Windows programs that we
  ported to X.  Does such a help mechanism exist on X?  It beats the *%$!
  out of anything I've used with OLIT.  If not, are there any specific
  gotcha's to watch out for when writing such a beast?

Any other comments (technical or non-technical) on such an undertaking  would
be appreciated, as well.  Maybe I just haven't looked in the right place?

Thanks for your help.  I'll summarize any email I get to both groups that
received this post.

doug
-----                                        |  "Relax ... Take it easy ..."
Doug Luecke              doug@iex.com        |  I keep tellin myself and
IEX Corporation          uunet!iex!doug      |  tellin myself, but it
Plano, TX  75093         214/612-2600        |  just don't sink in.
--
-----                                        |  "Relax ... Take it easy ..."
Doug Luecke              doug@iex.com        |  I keep tellin myself and
IEX Corporation          uunet!iex!doug      |  tellin myself, but it
Plano, TX  75093         214/612-2600        |  just don't sink in.