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From: guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Using Xlib instead of toolkits
Message-ID: <8288@boring.cwi.nl>
Date: 25 Jul 89 11:46:35 GMT
References: <3437@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu. <1210014@hpfcmgw.HP.COM. <15326@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <2281@auspex.auspex.com>
Sender: news@cwi.nl
Reply-To: guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum)
Organization: The Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Amoebae
Lines: 29

In article <2281@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:

>>Obviously, we layered on some standard packaging for getting a window
>>displayed, abstracting input events, etc.
>
>Sounds like you implemented a toolkit, which puts you into category 2)
>of the categories listed above.

Indeed.  In many cases it's worth writing your own lean and mean toolkit
instead of relying on the intrinsics (Xt) and a specific widget set.
(Your own toolkit doesn't need to rely on Xt.)  This will buy you
vendor-independence (true, Xt is available everywhere, but most widget
sets aren't) and performance: Xt and most widget sets provide almost
infinite flexibility, but at considerable cost -- carefully chosen
restrictions to a particular problem domain can make your own toolkit
a lot faster (especially to start up) and smaller (hence faster again).

Maybe Xt and a widget set could be seen as rapid prototyping tools --
they have some of the desirable properties for such tools, such as
extreme flexibility.  Unfortunately, one essential thing is missing:
debugging an Xt program can be a nightmare, and lint nor the compiler
catch type errors in widget argument lists, for instance.  Also, I
wouldn't say that writing a new widget is easy...  Unless you take the
source for an existing one and modify it to suit your purposes.

--
Guido van Rossum, Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Amsterdam
guido@cwi.nl or mcvax!guido or guido%cwi.nl@uunet.uu.net
"Repo man has all night, every night."