george@osc.COM (George Baggott) (09/01/90)
Having worked with Motif/UIL/Xt/Xlib for a while now, it has become apparent to me that while it is certainly powerful and flexible, GUI programming is much more complicated than it should be. Other environments that I've used, in particular the NextStep AppKit and the Andrew Toolkit, strike me as being much more elegent and effective. Having language support for object oriented programming makes things much cleaner and easier to use. Does anyone out there have any experience with some of the tools and/or class libraries available for X or X/Motif? I know of two C++ class libraries: The OI toolkit -- supports both Motif and Open Look styles from a single C++ class library. From what I can tell, it has a decent C++ interface, but no direct manipulation or user interface language. It is also relatively new, so its possible that it still has some rough edges in it. Open Dialog -- supports Motif via a C++ toolkit and a user interface language that appears to be slightly more powerful than UIL. From what I understand, this has been around for about 5 years and is in its second incarnation. It runs on a variety platforms and it also appears to be pretty elegent. I've also heard of several direct manipulation tools which generate UIL or C code. They all seem to be relatively new and I don't know much about them. If any one has any experiences or opinions regarding this area, I'd be interested in hearing about them. I'll post or mail a summary if people are interested... George