jal@jalhome.UUCP (Janice Ann Lacy) (08/03/90)
>Are there any prototyping tools (both free and commercial) for use in >creating Motif applications? Well here are the replies I got. I lost my comp.windows.x* feed for a while so I am not sure whether someone else already posted this same info. Sorry about the long delay, Janice ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Janice Ann Lacy Voice: (603) 878-4268 Lacy Software UUCP: harvard!m2c!jjmhome!jalhome!jal P.O. Box 130, Colburn Rd. Temple, NH 03084 ************************************************************************* From: harvard!jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov!david (David E. Smyth) Message-Id: <9007031502.AA09253@devvax.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> Subject: Prototyping tools for Motif?? To: jjmhome!jalhome!jal Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 8:02:46 PDT X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL14] Status: RO If you get comp.windows.x, there will be the Widget Creation Library with the Motif Resource Interpreter posted very soon, probably by Friday. If you don't get that news group, I can email it to you. Its about a half a mega byte. Free, we use it, I developed it, its getting pretty good reviews. Its not WYSIWYG, rather it allows the entire interface to be specified in Motif (really Xrm) resource files. The library actually is quite simple, most of the size is comments and error messages. Xrm resource files already allow most widget attributes to be specified. The Widget Creation Library also allows the heirarchy to be specified, the types of the widgets (class name, cloass pointer, or Motif convenience function), allows callbacks and action routines to be bound to the widgets, and provides many general purpose callbacks to manage/unmanage/set_vales, and so on. I would suggest waiting until its on comp.windows.x to save your mail costs. Otherwise, send me mail and you'll get it immediately. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: --------------------------- There is only one right place to have a party: someone else's place. - P.J.O'Rourke ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ************************************************************************* To: jjmhome!jalhome!jal Subject: prototyping tools for motif Date: Tue, 03 Jul 90 09:22:22 EDT From: erik <harvard!sei.cmu.edu!ejh> Status: RO hi janice, caught your post on xpert... it just so happens that there are. of the free ones (of which there are very few), the one with the most functionality is Serpent, which is a UIMS that handles athena and a subset of motif. we're just getting ready to release full motif support. we're also looking around for folks to alpha test our interactive editor. interested? if so, do you have ftp access? erik hardy sei/user interface project ************************************************************************* Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 10:41:40 PDT From: harvard!hydra.jpl.nasa.gov!ral (Roger Lighty) Message-Id: <9007031741.AA08842@hydra.jpl.nasa.gov> To: jjmhome!jalhome!jal Subject: Re: Prototyping tools for Motif?? Status: RO I have been using Serpent for 16 months now with the Athena widget set. The latest release included limited support for MOTIF. The next release 4Q90(?) will provide greater support. There is also some sort of graphical editor available for 2 or 3 gineau (sp?) pigs to alpha test. The S/W is free (anonymous ftp) from fg.sei.cmu.edu. For more info contact erik/robert at serpent-info@sei.cmu.edu. This tool set is for a UIMS; it is MORE than ju just a widget builder. GOOD LUCK I look forward to your summary. Did you see the summaryScott Schneider (scheindr@june.cs.washington.edu) did on User Interface Prototyping TOOLS on June 1 on xpert (probably also on comp.windows.x about same time if there is some one ther archiving news). -- roger ral@hydra.jpl.nasa.gov ************************************************************************* To: harvard!jalhome!jal (Janice Ann Lacy) Subject: Re: prototyping tools for motif In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 03 Jul 90 14:22:40 EDT." <9007031422.AA12419@jalhome.UUCP> Date: Tue, 03 Jul 90 15:28:23 EDT From: erik <harvard!SEI.CMU.EDU!ejh> Status: RO well, it's also at the various uucp x archives. see the monthly posting on xpert for where they are. if you want to do ftp, the original announcement is appended to this email. good luck. erik The Software Engineering Institute announces the Serpent User Interface Management System, Alpha Release 0.8. Serpent is available via anonymous ftp from fg.sei.cmu.edu (128.237.2.163) and can be found in pub/serpent. There is a small README file and a large (~1.6 MB) compressed tar file called serpent.tar.Z. See the README file to get started. Serpent is also available on expo.lcs.mit.edu (18.30.0.212) in contrib. It is also called serpent.tar.Z, but the README file is named serpent.README. We are working on establishing other forms of access to Serpent. As these become available, we will update the net. Serpent Alpha Release 0.8 represents a significant change over Alpha Release 0.7, in terms of enhanced capabilities, the addition of a portion of the Motif Widget set, and the visual portion of the Serpent Editor. There are some new Athena widget demonstrations, as well as many Motif widget demonstrations. Serpent represents a new generation of User Interface Management Systems which manage the total dynamic behavior of an interface and which allow applications to remain uninvolved with the details of the user interface. Serpent is a UIMS which is designed to manage the specification and dynamic behavior of (relatively) arbitrary toolkits. It provides for a fixed application programmer interface across changes in toolkits. This allows an application to evolve from one toolkit to another, and Serpent manages all of the interactions between the toolkits. There is a language which is used to describe the user interface and its dynamic behavior. There is an editor (under construction) which will allow the interface to be built using standard type drawing facilities. The language is very simple for specifying simple interfaces ("Hello World" is reproduced in its entirety following the text) and is powerful enough to provide for drawing and visual programming demonstrations (both are included in the released software). Serpent is intended to be used either with an application (in a production environment) or without an application (in a prototyping environment). There is an interface description language used both by the application to describe its interface to Serpent and by the toolkits to describe their interface to Serpent. Applications and toolkits written in either C or Ada can be used with Serpent, although the interface description mechanism is designed to be extensible to other languages. The Hello World program is: #include "saw.ill" ||| OBJECTS: hello: label_widget {ATTRIBUTES: label_text: "Hello world"; } The following people contributed to the development of Serpent: Len Bass Mary Beth Chrissis Brian Clapper Chris Cook Marianne Deacon Erik Hardy Rick Kazman Dan Klein Reed Little Tim McMahon Roger Moos Robert Seacord We would also like to thank Steve Edwards at IDA for his extensive work on the Ada interface. ************************************************************************* Date: Thu, 5 Jul 90 09:38:03 -0700 From: lectroid!uunet!june.cs.washington.edu!schneidr (Scott Schneider) Message-Id: <9007051638.AA04042@june.cs.washington.edu> To: jalhome!jal@june.cs.washington.edu Subject: Re: Prototyping tools for Motif?? Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.motif In-Reply-To: <107@jalhome.UUCP> Organization: University of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle Status: RO In article <107@jalhome.UUCP> you write: > >Are there any prototyping tools (both free and commercial) for use in >creating Motif applications? Yes there are. First, a distinction. A prototyping tool implies that you are just laying out user interfaces to see that they will look like, then when you get it looking "right", you throw away the prototype and build the real interface. I have been investigating tools that fall into a category called User Interface Design Tools, or something along these lines. These tools allow a developer to actually prototype and build a usable user interface by "hooking" together user interface objects and defining corresponding actions. The result of developing a user interface with an IDT is a source code file representing the user interface portion of an application program. Some IDTs also provide a facility for describing the dialog layer between the user interface and the application interface. These tools may also be referred to as a UIMS (User Interface Management System). For Motif, look into the following: 1) TeleUSE TeleSoft Corporation 5959 Cornerstone Court West San Diego, CA 92121-9891 (619) 457-2700 TeleUSE is one of the best IDTs on the market. It allows a user to build Motif and/or Athena based User interfaces via a graphical layout editor. The user plops down interface objects (widgets) using the layout editor, hooks them up the he/she wants the user interface to look, and can then generate source code for the user interface. It also has a test mode that allows one to do some very nice rapid prototyping. Also has a facility for defining the dialog layer between the user interface and the application program. 2) XBuild Nixdorf Computer Engineering Corporation 4 Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 (617) 864-0066 I haven't seen XBuild (I will get it soon) but I have heard really good things about it from some X authorities. I have heard that it is better than TeleUSE (which I have seen). XBuild comes as a source code license ($5000) and you pay Nixdorf royalties for any binary you generate for internal use ($1500). Call Nixdorf for a $25 trial version if you run on a Sun 3, mips, SparcStation, DECstation or SCO Unix (386). I'll let you know what I think about XBuild when I get to see it. 3) UIMX Visual Edge Software Ltd. 3870 Cote Vertu St. Laurent, Quebec H4R 1V4 (514) 332-6430 Very nice IDT. I have seen it run, looks nice, builds Motif UIs. There are several companies who are OEMs for UIMX (HP is one). Also creates Open Look interfaces, if you are interested. That's all I know about this one. 4) Builder XCessory Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS) 163 Harvard St Cambridge, MA 02139 EMAIL: info@ics.com Don't know anymore. 5) EXOCode/AUTOCode Expert Object Corporation 7250 Cicero Ave Suite 201 Lincolnwood, Ill 60646 (312) 676-5555 I have literature on most of these if you are interested. Good Luck in your search. Hope this helps. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Scott Schneider | "Communication with an engineer is | Boeing Commercial | only slightly more difficult than | schneidr@june.cs.washington.edu | communication with the dead." | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (206) 234-2739 ************************************************************************* To: motif@alphalpha.com.uucp Cc: jjmhome!jalhome!jal (Janice Ann Lacy) Subject: Re: Prototyping tools for Motif?? In-Reply-To: Your message of 03 Jul 90 03:05:04 +0000 Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Software & Systems Lab, Palo Alto, CA. X-Mailer: mh6.6 Date: Fri, 06 Jul 90 00:29:55 PDT From: Niels P. Mayer <harvard!hplnpm.hpl.hp.com!mayer> Status: RO > Are there any prototyping tools (both free and commercial) for use in > creating Motif applications? You may be interested in WINTERP -- source is available for free under the MIT X Consortium's R4 contrib copyright notice. Here's an abstract of my paper on WINTERP as presented at Xhibition '90: -------------------- 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 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 expo.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/winterp/winterp.tar.Z * Portable -- runs without porting on most 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 of Motif/Xt/X data. * Contains facilities for "direct manipulation" of UI components; You may obtain the current source, documentation, and examples via anonymous ftp from host expo.lcs.mit.edu: in directory contrib/winterp you will find the compress(1)'d tar(1) file winterp.tar.Z. If you do not have Internet access you may request the source code to be mailed to you by sending a message to winterp-source%hplnpm@hplabs.hp.com or hplabs!hplnpm!winterp-source. 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- mayer@hplabs.hp.com Human-Computer Interaction Department Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Palo Alto, CA. * ************************************************************************* From crackers!transfer!xylogics!samsung!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!emv Fri Jul 6 12:02:16 EDT 1990 Article: 323 of comp.archives Path: jalhome!crackers!transfer!xylogics!samsung!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!emv From: david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) Newsgroups: comp.archives Subject: [xpert] RELEASE: Widget Creation Lib, Mri, Ari Message-ID: <1990Jul5.190609.25957@math.lsa.umich.edu> Date: 5 Jul 90 19:06:09 GMT Sender: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) Reply-To: david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) Followup-To: comp.windows.x Organization: University of Michigan, Department of Mathematics Lines: 259 Approved: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) X-Original-Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Archive-name: widget-creation-library/04-Jul-90 Original-posting-by: david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) Original-subject: RELEASE: Widget Creation Lib, Mri, Ari Archive-site: expo.lcs.mit.edu [18.30.0.212] Archive-directory: contrib Archive-files: Wc.tar.Z Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) The Widget Creation Library is a simple library which allows complete widget based user interfaces to be specified in Xrm resource files, including the widget heirarchy, the widget types and/or constructors, and callback bindings. Primordial versions of this software has been posted under the title "POOR MAN'S UIL - WsXc" and "Mri - Motif Resource Interpreter. In fact, the library works with Athena widgets, our home grown widgets, and widgets I've snarfed over the net. It reportedly works fine with Motif 1.1, and I see no reason it won't work with AT&T's OPEN LOOK widget set. The distribution comes with several README files and several example resource files for both Athena and Motif interfaces. The distribution builds the Athena Resource Interpreter (Ari), the Motif Resource Interpreter (Mri), a version of the Widget Creation Library which links against the X11R4 Xt lib, a version which links against the Motif 1.0 Xt lib, and two example programs which use the Widget Creation Library. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: --------------------------- There is only one right place to have a party: someone else's place. - P.J.O'Rourke ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first README file is as follows: The Widget Creation Library Distribution ---------------------------------------- The Widget Creation Library is a cleanup and enhancement of Martin Brunecky's second posting of WsXc. The emphasis of the cleanup was to provide a separation of functionality and declarations between source and include files, to make the naming concise and unique, and to reduce the complexity of the interface between the library and the application (it was pretty darn good already). The emphasis of the enhancements were to add clear(er) warning and error messages, add more utility callbacks, and to provide a few simple functions which make writing callbacks and converters a little easier. One of the guiding principles was and is KISS. This is intended to be a very small library which provides very big gains in productivity for programmers developing applications using the various widget sets based on the Xt Intrinsics. A large number of the total lines of code provide error messages. The rest is quite straight forward. This directory contains files which make up libWc, the Widget Creation Library, Ari, the Athena Resource Interpreter, and Mri, the Motif Resource Interpreter. Authors ------- Martin Brunecky at Auto-trol Technology, Denver (marbru@auto-trol.UUCP) wrote the initial code and posted it to comp.windows.x with the title POOR MAN's UIL - WsXc. David Harrison of the UC Berkeley Electronics Research Lab (davidh@ic.Berkeley.EDU or ...!ucbvax!ucbcad!davidh) wrote a very useful Table widget. It is so good I've included it with this distribution. It is separately available from archive sites. See TableREADME.ANNOUNCE and TableREADME.FIRST for information on this widget. I made very minor edits to make it work with Motif, and I fixed exactly one minor bug. Rod Whitby of Austek Microsystems Pty. Ltd. in Adelaide, Australia (rwhitby@adl.austek.oz.au) wrote the Imakefile, the XCalP example, the WcRegIntrinsic.c file, and caught several bugs. The rest was done by me, and here is my standard .sig: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- README Files and Documentation ------------------------------ The *README files provide minimal documentation. I think you will find the comments in the source files useful. Also, several example resource files are provided with extensive comments. A real manual is actually being written, but it won't be available for a month at least, probably not until September 1990. Makefiles --------- An Imakefile is provided. The Makefile can be built predictably: % make Makefile You may then build the delivery using this Makefile: % make -f Makefile Several very simple makefiles are provided. A driver makefile, called `makefile' builds the Makefile using Imake, and can also be used to build the delivery for those who don't have or use Imake. The driver makefile causes each of the targets to be built using separate makefiles: libWc.a is built with makefile_libWc, Mri is built with makefile_Mri, and so on. The intent is this: after one uses the Ari or Mri resource interpreters to build a prototype, one can start hacking with the desired interpreter and its separate makefile. Gnu Make will be used in the future. Building The Distribution ------------------------- If you have Imake, you can build the distribution very simply. You may have to edit the `makefile' if you don't have Motif: simply comment out line 109 which should be this one: IMAKE_DEFINES = -DHAVE_MOTIF Then, build like other X clients and libraries: % make Makefile % make -f Makefile Otherwise, you may have to set the CC, CFLAGS, and LDFLAGS macros in each of the makefiles. The makefiles work for gcc and SunOS cc when the Motif libraries are installed as recommended by ICS, and when the X libraries are installed reasonably. As provided, they use gcc. The easiest thing to do is simply this: % make which causes all the libraries and executables to be built. If you change any of the source files, you will notice that you must first remove the targets (App, Ari, and Mri) in order to make anything re-build. Do it like this: % make again which removes these targets, recompiles minimally, but of course re-links whether or not they really needed it. Hey, it's not perfect, but it's simple. If you want things to run quickly and the library to be small, build the executables and libraries with debug flags off and optimization turned on: % make optimal Testing The Distribution ------------------------ I have included a simple test csh script which executes all of the example programs. After you build, the test program will execute which ever or the executable targets it finds. Just do the following: % test Widget Creation Library ----------------------- The makefiles build two versions of the library: one works quite well with the Motif 1.0 widget set and uses the Motif 1.0 Intrinsics. This version is called libWcm.a, following ICS's naming convention. The other version works with the Athena widget set and the X11R4 Xt Intrinsics in general. It is called libWc.a When Motif 1.1 is released, it should link against the latter include file without any problems. I got the following message from Mike Yee at OSF regarding this release of Mri and the Widget Creation Library: Good News! Mri is up and running under Motif 1.1! It only required minor changes in the makefiles and the removal of references to compositeObjectClass which does not exist in the R4 intrinsics. It a pretty nifty program. Thanks for sending it. I applied his fixes to this release. Mri and Ari Widget Resource Interpreters ---------------------------------------- There are also two "interpreters" which allow widget based user interfaces to be developed and to have a few useful behaviors. These interpreters are intended to be useful for prototyping. Ari is the Athena Resource Interpreter, and it knows about all the Athena widgets. Mri is the Motif Resource Interpreter, and is knows about all the Motif widgets. Both interpreters also know about the very useful Table widget, which is described in the files Table*. Each interpreter consists of a main() procedure, and a function which registers all the known widget types. Mri consists of Mri.c and MriRegMotif.c while Ari consists of Ari.c and AriRegAthena.c. The registration files are intended to be independent. It should be a simple task to build a single interpreter which knows about every widget on earth, but if you don't have shared libs, the resulting executable is HUGE. Several resource files are provided for each of the interpreters. They are named Ari<nn>.<description> and Mri<nn>.<description>. To try out the interpreters (after you build them), do the following: % alias se setenv XENVIRONMENT % se Ari01.HelloWorld % Ari % se Mri07.PDWidgets % Mri The resource files are intended to be tutorials, so they are heavily commented and they explore various topics you may find interesting. Once an interface is prototyped using Mri or Ari, one can take the Mri or Ari source files and makefiles and evolve them into applications. App - A Sample Application -------------------------- The program App is exactly one such example application. The files Ari.c and makefile_Ari were gradually modified as additional behaviors were defined, registered with the Wc library, and bound to the appropriate widgets within the App01.Everything resource file. If you look at App.c, you will notice that main() is very minimal. The application is really defined by its resource file (the look and feel) and the callbacks (the behavior). Notice that the callbacks use several routines provided by the Wc library. They will be introduced in another README file. After you build App, you can try it out as follows: % se App01.Everything % App ************************************************************************* Received: by rise.telesoft.com (TS.KFPi.6exp); Wed, 18 Jul 90 16:04:52 PDT From: harvard!ames!ucsd!telesoft!chas (Charles A. White @lizard) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 16:04:52 PDT To: jjmhome!jalhome!jal Status: RO To: m2c!jjmhome!jalhome!jal Subject: Motif prototyping tools >Your replies by E-mail will be much appreciated. I'll summarize and >post any E-mail I get. > >Janice > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- >Janice Ann Lacy voice (603) 878-4268 >Lacy Software m2c!jjmhome!jalhome!jal >P.O. Box 130, Colburn Rd. >Temple, NH 03084 Theres a lot of them out there now. They come in 2 different groups: Interactive Design Tools or IDTs, and User Interface Management Systems or UIMSs. An IDT is used generally to specify what the UI for an application will look like, but has no support for doing things once the application gets going. A UIMS does both. IDTs are cheaper or at least should be. IDTs include XBuild from Nixdorf Builder Xcessory from ICS UIMX from Visual Edge and many others In this group there are many that support Motif. UIMSs include TeleUSE from TeleSoft Serpent from Carnegie-Mellon Winterp from HP Labs DataViews from VI Corp. TAE+ from NASA Of this group I believe only TeleUSE meets the criteria of being a currently available product which supports Motif. Dataviews and TAE are not yet on Motif, Serpent and Winterp are still in the early stages of development (They are available, but you would have a hard time doing much with them.) I am somewhat biased since I work for Telesoft and I think we have far and away the best tool, however, I think that most people who do a good evaluation agree with me. There are still some holes of course, but not any gaping ones. TeleUSE offers the following: An editor for graphically defining windows, menus, forms, dialog boxes, etc. It has complete support for all Motif, Athena widgets, plus user defined widgets, support for all attributes of all widgets, palettes for setting colors, fonts, patterns, etc. Multiple views, i.e. a graphical view of what the object looks like, and a tree/browser view of the hierarchy which is being created. A dialog manager which helpsyou specify and manage what is happening while the application is running. Includes a language, which is object-oriented, lots of constructs for searching the hierarchy and setting attributes, for example, to set the label on a widget named BigLabel somewhere in the widget hierarchy, the following command is used: top->BigLabel.labelString := "New Label"; BigLabel can be anywhere in the hierarchy as long as it is unique, or some intermediate node is given. Try that in X sometime. The dialog manager allows development of code in an interpretive mode, or in compiled mode. There is also a debugger supplied for debugging code. There is a large library of rountines for doing common things in X, which reduce coding from 30-70% for various tasks. There is also a builder tool which takes the output of the editor and the dialog manager and generates the application. Creates a makefile from a simple description file of generally only 5-10 lines. Any more questions, please call or write. Charles White TeleSoft (619)457-2700 chas@telesoft.com 5959 Cornerstone Ct. West San Diego, CA 92121-9891 ************************************************************************* Received: by lizard.telesoft.com (TS.KFPi.6exp); Thu, 19 Jul 90 08:43:08 PDT From: harvard!ames!ucsd!telesoft!chas (Charles A. White @lizard) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 08:43:08 PDT To: ames!harvard!jalhome!jal Subject: Re: your mail Status: RO TeleUSE is currently available on DEC3100 SUN3, SUN4, Sparcstation Data general Aviion Will be available soon (next 90 days) on: VAX/VMS HP/Apollo (machines with new cobmined OS) IBM R6000 A 386 box, but I'm not sure which one (SCO probably) Do you know how compatible the various 386s are? Price is $7500 for a single CPU. Thanks for the interest. Chas chas@telesoft.com
paul@dialogic.com (The Imaginative Moron aka Joey Pheromone) (08/04/90)
I just wanted to say a big "thank you " to Janice for the summary. I found it really useful. This is the way the net should be. -- Paul Bennett | | "I give in, to sin, because Dialogic Corp. | paul@dialogic.com | You have to make this life 300 Littleton Road | ..!uunet!dialogic!paul | livable" Parsippany, NJ 07054 | | Martin Gore