From: matt@centerline.com (Matt Landau)
Subject: Re: Motif vs Open-look vs X
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 19:50:15 GMT

In <1576@sdrc.COM> wggabb@sdrc.COM (Rob Gabbard) writes:
>Motif is a product in as much as it is composed of a set of libraries, include
>files, and a UIL compiler.  

When people say "Motif", they're referring to one or more of a number of 
things, including (1) a user interface specification or the application
style it describes, (2) a library API specification, and/or (3) a library
from OSF that that implements the behavior specification using the API
specification.

As for what OSF officially means by the term "Motif", well, I have yet 
to figure that one out.  It's not the pure behavior spec, because that
keeps changing to match bugs or implementation considerations in the 
library.  It's not the library API, because people continually talk about
how "open" Motif is, and how anyone can implement it.  As near as I can
figure out, they're talking about whatever the current implementation of
the library is.

(Personal opinion:  This is one place where ATT, Sun, and UI have done 
a MUCH better job than OSF in the GUI standards wars.  There is no real
ambiguity about what OPEN LOOK "is", a published specification with 
multiple implementations.  All of the current implementations have bugs
and places where they deviate from the spec, but the vendors don't keep
rewriting the spec to match the current set of bugs.  In my opinion, it
takes a lot of corporate "guts" to say "Yup, there are bugs in our OPEN
LOOK toolkit, and we'll try to get around to fixing them so it matches
the specification" than to keep rewriting the specs.  It also makes it
MUCH easier for 3rd parties to write their own toolkits to match the
spec if the spec is somewhat stable.)

>Also remember, Open Look is simply a user interface specification.  

Right.  Also remember, the fact that it's simply a specification is one
of its strongest points -- ie, it's a feature, not a bug.

>currently several implementations of this specification. XView is one Sun 
>produced whose API closely resembles their older SunView window system's API.
>This allowed the large base of SunView applications to easily migrate from 
>the proprietary SunView window system to X. This also allowed Sun to say they
>already had a huge amount of Open Look applications, claiming quick
>victory over Motif when in reality they were just ports of SunView
>applications. 

So what?  In point of fact, the "ports" of SunView applications WERE (and 
still are, for that matter) compliant with the OPEN LOOK specification;
they WERE Open Look applications.  Why do care what toolkit was used to
create them?  Do you care what language they were written in?  Is a C 
program any more or less a "Unix application" than a Fortran program?

>Their is also OLIT, the
>Open Look Intrinsics Toolkit, which I believe was developed by AT&T with an
>Xt based API. This is the toolkit that most X programmers would 
>probably choose since it is Xt based and extensible (custom widgets, etc.)

There's a lot I could say in response to this statement, but I'll just
say that I'm real interested in watching the future of the Intrinsics
based toolkits...  Truly an archictecture from the '70s.  (Don't get me
wrong: I'm very impressed that the developers of X11 were able to do as
much as they were in the Intrinsics architecture while still writing 
things in C.  I just can't imagine basing the next 10 or 20 years of
software development on it...)

>There is also a NeWS based Open Look toolkit although I don't remember its
>name or know any details about it. 

TNT -- The NeWS Toolkit.

>All OpenWindows is comprised of is an an integrated set 
>of OpenLook based (probably XView) desktop productivity tools. Remember when 
>Sun said they wouldn't do anything but NeWS :-) ?

Uhhhh, not exactly.  OpenWindows consists of the XNeWS server, the 
DeskSet tools, the olwm window manager, ToolTalk (in OWN V3), etc.

The interesting technology in OpenWindows is the XNeWS server, which 
understands both the X11 and NeWS protocols simultaneously.  Read up
on the XNeWS architecture sometime -- it's really a fascinating (and
remarkably well designed) piece of window system technology.  It has
some performance characteristics that need work, and a different set
of bugs from the MIT servers you might be used to, but it's a got the
potential to support a completely new class of distributed window-based 
applications, which is something X11 in its current incarnations will 
never be able to do.

Too bad Sun botched the politics and marketing ... a merger of the best
of NeWS and X (which is what the XNeWS server is trying for) would have
really advanced the state of the art for a large installed machine base,
and a large number of users as well.  
--
 Matt Landau			Waiting for a flash of enlightenment
 matt@centerline.com			  in all this blood and thunder