From: fgreco@cfdev1026.shearson.com (Frank Greco)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.open-look
Subject: Re: Alternatives to Xt based toolkits? (Was: Re: SunSoft Windows Positioning)
Date: 18 Nov 92 15:50:57 GMT

> In article <1e0grvINNije@armory.centerline.com> matt@centerline.com (Matt Landau) writes:
> :But on the brighter side, maybe this will get people to take a second
> :look at other non-widget based toolkits.  There are a lot of good ideas
> :out there, and a lot of interesting implementations.  Perhaps if the 
> 
> Okay, what are some of these alternatives that are viable - i.e. development
> is continuing?  

	All of these handle *both* OPEN LOOK and Motif.  And all are
	not Xt-based.

	ParcPlace's OI is a very nice and "pure" (as pure as pure can
	be with Xlib) C++ toolkit.  Their Resource/GUI builder UIB
	could use a human factors person (it's just not as easy to use
	as Devguide 3.0), but you can add/subtract your own OI objects.
	The Prentice-Hall OI (Gary Aiken) book helps tremendously.
	No C interface, but not really that much of a problem since
	most people are moving to C++ anyway.

	Visix Galaxy seems to be a nice alternative.  Company seems to
	take usability and visual appeal seriously.  Abstracts more than
	just GUI.  It's quite a big system with big goals (portability
	among different hardware architectures and OS platforms) and
	fairly expensive.  Seems to comform well to ICCCM unlike
	similar products.  Their icon editor is super (can produce
	usable color icons).  Resource editor a bit hard to use.
	Has a C interface now, pure (ie, non-wrapper) C++ class library
	is in beta.  The C interface is a bit on the awkward side;
	LongHumongoFunctionCallNamesThatAreHardToRemember().  The C++
	API is supposed to help significantly here.  Also has RPC,
	filesystem, memory, etc... abstractions which you may like
	or detest.

	Gain Technology (now owned by Sybase, btw) has interesting
	Xlib-based multi-LnF toolkit that their multimedia product
	uses.  Gave great demo at SPARCclassic/LX announcement.



	Of course, there's XVT and Aspect which also give you
	multi-LnF, but they use the underlying Xt-based widget set.
	Most people that I've talked to over the net, say that these do
	not give you that fine degree of control, but for many in-house
	applications they may be suitable enough.

> Another possibility is that someone (or ones...) may decide to take XView 
> and slingshot, work out the legal situation with Sun after it is dropped,
> and go on and DO the things that XView programmers have been waiting on
> Sun to do.  Since it appears that the various new features that have
> been mentioned in this group lately are not coming before the EOL perhaps
> it is time for programmers to go ahead and write their own XView
> extensions.

	In order to extend XView's life significantly, it must be
	rewritten from scratch to use C++.  Having a wrapper around
	XView (ie, UIT or XV++) will not extend XView into the future.
	It may be useful now, but having a "pure" C++ class library
	will be a necessary attribute of any GUI toolkit in the near
	future.  You must be able to subclass low-level objects
	directly in C++.  And... the varargs approach is not a welcome
	programming model in the C++ household.

	Also the obtuse panel design borrowed from Sunview has to be
	completely redesigned.  Scrollbar manipulation has got to be
	improved.  Slingshots must be incorporated at the low-level
	(why weren't Brian W's ideas folded more quickly into
	base-level XView?  Internal politics perhaps?).  Fonts/colors
	in panels, table package, incorporating multi-threading into
	the notifier, etc...etc...

	Yes, maybe Larry has an idea.  Let another company take on
	XView and extend it a bit (how about NeWS/TNT too?).
	Unfortunately, if you look at the situation objectively (really
	hard, since I honestly like XView btw), imho it will take too
	much time/effort/money to keep it going.

	Besides, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that
	SunLabs is probably working on a NeXTstep-like environment
	judging from what Wayne Rosing was saying during the last
	Sunergy satellite download.

	Frank G.
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Newsgroups: comp.windows.open-look