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From: rprobst@SUN.COM (Richard Probst)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: What is that MOTIF thang on expo?!?
Message-ID: <8908292118.AA07788@paba.sun.com>
Date: 29 Aug 89 21:18:09 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 46


Bill Mitchell writes:

> I wonder if it's a little misleading to call XView a "toolkit".
> Personally, when I hear "toolkit" and "X" in the same sentence,
> I think of widgets.

Since you're speaking personally, you are welcome to think 
whatever you want to...				;-)
... but in this case, you're simply wrong.

There are several X toolkits that are not based on the widget
work from MIT.  Interviews is an X toolkit.  Andrew is an
X toolkit.  And XView is an X toolkit.  "Toolkit" implies
a particular architecture, which all of these systems share.
It does not imply widget-set-and-Xt-intrinsics.  The Xt-based
systems are X toolkits, since they also have this architecture.
but they are not the only X toolkits.

(Personally, when I hear "operating system" and "POSIX" in the
same sentence, I think of UNIX(tm).  But that is also wrong.)

Bill Mitchell continues:

> If OSF is interested in reducing the ranks of OPEN LOOKers,
> it seems to me that an interesting thing for them to produce
> would be MotifView -- SunView on the programmer side and Motif
> on the user side.

This could certainly be done.  We are about to make the XView
source code freely available.  Anybody who wants to (OSF or
otherwise) can take the XView source and modify it to support
the Motif look-and-feel.  Since there are more than 2000 SunView
applications, this may be an attractive business opportunity.
And since the OPEN LOOK GUI spec is approximately a superset
of the Motif GUI spec (except, primarily, for the keyboard
traversal), this would not be all that hard.  Of course, Sun
continues to promote OPEN LOOK as the technically superior GUI
spec; all I am saying is that we are giving the XView source
code away so that others can port it or modify it as they choose.

Let me just add that I personally would welcome OSF following
Sun's lead and making the Motif source code freely available,
with no royalties or licensing restrictions.  Any takers?

	--Richard Probst (rprobst@sun.com)