hit@anton.informatik.uni-dortmund.de ( * HIT * ) (07/24/90)
Hello experts, has anyone of you already replaced Athena-Widgets by Motif-Widgets in an application? What are your experiences? Can you give some hints? Are there any tools (available/being built) to port Athena applications to Motif? I have to write a study about this topic, concerning a concrete Athena application, and I would highly appreciate any comments from you. Note that I am a beginner concerning Motif. Thanks in advance, Norbert Weissenberg. Email to: hit@anton.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Phone : FRG-231-755-4892 Fax : ...-2386
rick@pcrat.uucp (Rick Richardson) (07/24/90)
In article <2336@laura.UUCP> hit@anton.informatik.uni-dortmund.de ( * HIT * ) writes: >Hello experts, >has anyone of you already replaced Athena-Widgets by Motif-Widgets >in an application? Right in the middle of doing it now. So far, I'd say that going from Athena to Motif is an exercise in substituting one set of (painfully determined) bug workarounds for an as-yet-unknown-in-scope set of bugs. >What are your experiences? Can you give some hints? Being halfway (optimistically) down the road now, I would say that it is a mistake to assume that you can get away with having just the Motif binary libs and include files. Budget in a Motif source license before you start (we didn't). >Are there any tools (available/being built) to port >Athena applications to Motif? At least for us, it would have to be an AI program, like: "Athena scrollbar hack detected...deleting" "Athena form detected...Motif form OTL...switch to manual" Besides, there is quite a bit in Motif that calls out to you to make UI style changes. It is very tempting to fidget with a widget or two. This is the only fun part of Motif. Coworkers can tell when you do this, because you break into mindless song: I'm fidgeting a widget, or two Not an ordinary widget, or two And when I'm done I'll see it on the Sun I'm fidgeting a widget, or two [repeat, ad nauseum] OK, so the Sun has OpenLook. It rhymed, damnit! How about this: And when I'm done It won't work on the Sun >Note that I am a beginner concerning Motif. Same here. You get Motif developer status when you have identified all of the bugs. You get your guru badge when you have completed debugging the widget set. That means, we're all beginners. -Rick -- Rick Richardson | JetRoff "di"-troff to LaserJet Postprocessor| Ask about PC Research,Inc.| Mail: uunet!pcrat!jetroff; For anon uucp do:| FaxiX uunet!pcrat!rick| uucp jetroff!~jetuucp/file_list ~nuucp/. | for UNIX/386 jetroff Wk2200-0300,Sa,Su ACU {2400,PEP} 12013898963 "" \d\r\d ogin: jetuucp
richard@unipalm.co.uk (Richard) (07/25/90)
When I worked for my previous company, I ported our Y-OpenTop desktop from Athena Widgets to Motif in about 2 man weeks. The easiest way to start is with UIL, to generate the main windows that you are going to need. Unfortunately, I found that UIL is too slow for the real thing (It took around 10 seconds for the popup menus to popup the first time), so, having got the visual part of the applications defined, I recoded all the UIL stuff into raw Motif widget calls. You should use the opportunity of the port to rework the interface, with particular reference to things like popup menus, accelerators and use of composite widgets such as file selection boxes. Richard.