From: guy@Auspex.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
Subject: Re: Motif on Sun
Date: 16 Nov 92 03:14:16 GMT
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara

>I am thinking of buying a SPARCstation and installing X11Rx and Motif.
>Will I be able to use programs like Answerbook, SunPC, NewsPrint or
>SimplifySQL?

"Motif" generally refers either to:

	1) a window-system look and feel;

	2) a particular toolkit (OSF's Motif widget set) and window
	   manager (OSF's "mwm") implementing that look and feel.

"Open Windows" refers collectively to a number of different window
system components:

	1) Sun's X11/NeWS server;

	2) those X11 client-side (library, include file, application,
	   etc. components of the core X11R4 distribution that Sun
	   supplies in a particular OW release;

	3) the additional toolkits (XView, OLIT, TNT) and window manager
	   ("olwm") that Sun supplies;

	4) additional X11 and NeWS clients that Sun supplies (although
	   some are, I guess, considered part of the DeskSet).

As far as I know, it is possible to run various distributions of the
Motif widget set and window manager on top of Sun's X11/NeWS server and
those components of the core X11R4 distribution that Sun supplies in a
particular OW release.

There may be bugs in the X11/NeWS server, and in the Sun versions of the
client-side core distribution components, that may get in the way of
Motif or prevent it from working (I think there are server bugs in some
OW versions, for example), but there may also be patches for them.

I don't know whether the Motif toolkit will work with the fairly-vanilla
version of the Xt Intrinsics that come with Open Windows (OW 2.0 isn't
up to the final X11R4 patch level; OW 3.0 allegedly is); you may have to
put in an OSF version of the Xt Intrinsics for Motif's use.

Later versions of Motif may require X11R5-vintage libraries, which
current OW releases don't supply.

I.e., installing X11Rx, and installing Motif, are two separate actions. 
You can install X11Rx on your Sun without installing Motif, and I think
you can successfully use Motif on your Sun without installing X11Rx,
although you may need to get patches from Sun for various parts of Open
Windows.

If you plan to install and use the MIT X11Rx server, you won't be able
to use AnswerBook; it relies on the X11/NeWS server.  There exist
mechanisms to use the AnswerBook files with a PostScript previewer; they
may be described in the FAQ.

I suspect at least some of the other programs will work with the MIT
X11Rx server (I suspect NeWSprint may even do so; it'd have to run its
own private version of the X11/NeWS server to render the Postscript into
dots on paper, but I think it can do so without conflicting with the MIT
X11 server).

However, some of those applications, while they may not require the NeWS
and may work with the MIT server, may:

	1) require the "olwm" window manager;

	2) require some OPEN LOOK toolkit.

If they require the "olwm" window manager, you won't be able to run
"mwm" (I say "require" here; they may merely *prefer* the "olwm"
manager, but be able to work with other window managers, perhaps by
turning some configuration option on either for the application or the
window manager in question - I think OPEN LOOK pushpins are one place
where an OPEN LOOK window manager may be preferred by the application,
but not necessarily required).

If they just require some OPEN LOOK toolkit, installing Motif shouldn't
be a problem - the Motif widget set is just another toolkit, and you can
have plenty of toolkits installed on your machine, as long as you have
enough disk space to store them and enough memory to keep them from
constantly fighting for pages, and as long as they don't do Evil Things
that cause one another problems (if they conform to the ICCCM, they're
probably less likely to do so).

(I assume here that you already have Open Windows, and thus already have
the OPEN LOOK toolkits in question, which you could run on top of the
MIT X11 server - assuming that they're X11 and not NeWS toolkits - and
can probably run with the MIT X11 libraries.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin