[comp.windows.x.motif] synthetic resources

Uucp@resq.fidonet.org (Uucp) (03/26/91)

From  uunet!osf.org!motif-talk-request
From: uunet!lta.com!david (David B. Lewis)
To:   motif-talk@lta.com
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 10:40:51 EST



Benjamin> I assume that you're subclassing Motif widgets.  In this
Benjamin> case there are some shortcuts involving the
Benjamin> as-yet-undocumented synthetic resource mechanism.

Isn't this the sort of thing that contractors typically are expected to provide?
I realize that OSF has reasons for not yet publishing the internals interfaces, 
but I would have thought that HP would have provided to OSF documentation on a 
major piece of functionality as part of the work on 1.1 a year ago, regardless 
of whether or not it is easy to reconstruct the essentials from the source,
assuming the source is correct.

Note that I'm not asking for anybody to publish this information; I'm just
surprised that it was never put in a form useful to people outside HP.
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Uucp@resq.fidonet.org (Uucp) (03/26/91)

From  uunet!osf.org!motif-talk-request
From: uunet!hpcvlx.cv.hp.com!ben (Benjamin Ellsworth)
To:   motif-talk@osf.org
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 91 13:40:51 pst

> Isn't this the sort of thing that contractors typically are expected
> to provide?

Often documentation of internal mechanisms is not part of contracted
work.  There are many cases where it makes no sense to place and pay
for that expectation.

It depends on the contractor, the customer, and their product and their
relationship.  In general, for a rapidly changing and growing product,
it rarely makes sense to invest in detailed interal documentation which
is going to be 80% obsolete within a year (it is usually about as
expensive to properly document such things as it is to build them). 
This is especially true when there is a good deal of permanence between
the contractor and customer.

When the feature set of Motif stabilizes, I expect that such internal
documentation will be required.  Until then, it only makes sense to
document the guts of motif that you don't think will change, and very
few of the internal mechanisms passed that filter for 1.1.

There is no guarantee that the synthetic resource mechanism won't
change in subtle ways for 1.2.  Internal stuff is that way.


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