zoran@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Zoran Hruskar) (12/13/90)
Recently (?) I saw an article listing various GUI builders that are available for X11R4 with Motif on Sun Sparcs. Since I have not saved the article I hope some kind soul will ( repost || send_me ) that article. While I have your attention I would also appreciate if you could share any experience you may have had with any X11R4/Motif(1.0.3 - 1.1) GUI builders and how well they work with UIL. Now for some fun & games... Where are the ftp sites for 'melt' and those little bugs that eat up the screen (or any other progs like that)? ( X11R4 && Sunview ) Thanks for the help!
david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) (12/13/90)
zoran@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Zoran Hruskar) writes: >Recently (?) I saw an article listing various GUI builders that are available >for X11R4 with Motif on Sun Sparcs. Since I have not saved the article >I hope some kind soul will ( repost || send_me ) that article. > >While I have your attention I would also appreciate if you could share >any experience you may have had with any X11R4/Motif(1.0.3 - 1.1) GUI >builders and how well they work with UIL. I suggest playing with Wcl, available on expo. It provides a very small extension to the existing resource scheme used by Widget sets including Motif. Basically, instead of introducing something rather complex and extremely widget set specific like UIL, Wcl simply adds those very few capabilities which UIL provided but Xrm did not. Specifically, when you link in libWc, you can specify all this stuff about the user interface in fully interpreted resource files: Widget Attributes (standard Xrm) Widget Action Bindings (standard Xrm) Widget Callback Bindings (provided by Wcl) Widget Class or Constructor (provided by Wcl) This scheme has some nice advantages over using straight Xt calls in your C code or using UIL: Your C code simply implements callbacks and initialization code. That stuff is pretty simple, and pretty compact. Resource files are a *very* compact representation of a user interface. True, its not WYSIWYG, but its pretty darn easy to write and change. And, people *are* writing WYSIWYG GUI builders which generate Wcl compatible resource files. Also, libWc is very small. On a SPARC, its 51082 bytes. UIL, on the other hand, is 361122 bytes. You can surmise which is faster. Also, your users can change *anything* about the interface. If they want something on a menu, or on a dialog, or written in some other language, or using some different manager widgets (as long as they are linked in), or ... Or, you users could do nothing, and simply use the resource files you provide. Its even possible to write applications with very little dependencies on widget sets. For example, I've got an application which allows Athena, Motif, some locally developed widgets, and some widgets which I grabbed off the net to be mixed together (carefully). Since this application runs on Suns with shared libraries, there is (almost) no problem in linking in all the widget libraries. Can't do that with UIL. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Smyth david@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov Senior Software Engineer, seismo!cit-vax!jpl-devvax!david X and Object Guru. (818)393-0983 Jet Propulsion Lab, M/S 230-103, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 --------------------------- Quote of the Day: --------------------------- "A Guru is not one who simply knows all the answers. Rather, a Guru is like one who walks among the mountains, and by wandering around abit, can see the horizon through long narrow canyons." -------------------------------------------------------------------------