Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!SUN.COM!aim
From: aim@SUN.COM (Amy)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Open Windows 2.0 released (Sun press release)
Message-ID: <9008021503.AA13347@slotown.mts-net>
Date: 2 Aug 90 15:03:37 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 55


>>What I want to know basically is "What would OW2.0 do for us ?"  Would I be
>>able to run OW/NeWS/X11 stuff on the 470 and have it displayed on an X-terminal
>>or any other X-machine ?  This would be wonderfull but I am unsure from what I
>>have read as to whether it is possible.  One of the things that would be really
>>usefull in this case would be the ability to run SunView applications on
>>remote X-terminals.
>>

One of the main goals of the X design was a sort of "device independence"
for displaying appications...so you absolutely CAN run the X client applications
(i.e. any tools that come with OW, etc) on the 470 and have them display
on virtually any X server (including XTerminals!).  HOWEVER!  Sometimes tools
are written to take advantage of special server resources (especially fonts) which
may or may not reside on the particular server you want to display on.  Some
clients do not deal with these 'missing' resources gracefully.  This is
particularly true with OW DeskSet Tools - they depend heavily on some
special OpenLook fonts.  If your server does not have these Openlook fonts,
all is not lost, however - these openlook fonts have been included in bdf format 
on the MIT R4 distribution tape.  If you can get these font files then usually
there is a way of making them accessible by the server (but these details
vary from server to server).

Regarding displaying sunview apps on non X11NeWS X server:
NO WAY.  Sunview is a kernel based window system - it can ONLY display
on the machine it is actually running on. Even the sunview compatibility 
provided by OpenWindows required some very special tweaking (X11NeWS isn't
*really* even aware that sunview applications are running).  No other
X servers provide this sunview compatibility mode (not even MIT X11).

>>On another note, the press release mentions a new version of XView that makes
>>it easy to convert current SunView stuff to X11.  How much easier ?  I fiddled
>>with XView a month or so ago, and tried to convert mush to use XView.  It
>>appeared to me that you would have to have about 5 years of experience in BOTH
>>X11 and SunView to have a hope of converting anything (but maybe I was
>>approaching the problem in the wrong way).  Has anyone managed this feat BTW,
>>as I am currently using xmh and long to be able to use "Xmush".  Tooltool is
>>another I would love to see converted as I have this wonderfull nntool that
>>I created in my old SunView days.
>>

The API of sunview and xview is very similar (uses variable length attributes
lists, the notifier, many of the same package names, i.e. "canvas", "panel", etc)
which is why it is EASIEST to move from sunview to xview than from sunview
to an Intrinsics based toolkit (like Motif or Xt+).  This does not mean
the complete migration of a program is EASY.  The UI stuff should map
nicely, but if your doing any sort of graphical drawing then it becomes
more sticky (pw and pixrect stuff must be converted to Xlib - which requires
a complete rewrite).  There is a tool shipped with OW called "convert_to_xview"
which will actually convert most of the UI code FOR you....
If you have any particular problems I'd be glad to help you further.

Regards,
Amy Moore
aim@sun.com