Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!hpcc05!hpcc01!wescheng
From: wescheng@hpcc01.HP.COM (Wesley Cheng)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: windows 3.0 --> X porting
Message-ID: <2730002@hpcc01.HP.COM>
Date: 24 Oct 90 15:17:16 GMT
References: <8554@aimed.UUCP>
Organization: HP Application Support Division
Lines: 39

/ hpcc01:comp.windows.ms / ken@aimed.UUCP (Ken Anderson) /  7:24 am  Oct 22, 1990 /

> what is my quickest route to porting it over to X, say under OSF/Motif?

	We have recently done a port of a Windows product to Motif. It
	wasn't that hard. There is a pretty good correlation (for the
	stuff that we needed) between X11 and Windows; both use the
	basic event driven model.

	If your program uses basic objects (dialog boxes, list boxes etc)
	and does not depend on Windows "tricks", then it should not be a
	problem at all. 

	A couple of things to be aware of (just off the top of my head):
	* X11 Callback vs. MSW Message Passing convention
	* Modality differences
	* X11 defaults vs MSW resource file

	

> Is there software available to help me, or just books (and good planning).

	I have heard some talk of conversion utilities between MSW resource
	files and Motif UIL files, which will give you the dialogs. I don't
	know if anything has actually been written.

	My suggestion is to get some good books on Motif programming, like
	Doug Young's "Programming with OSF/Motif Widgets" (or something
	like that). Doug and I presented a talk, "Designing an X11 Application"
	at Xhibition 90 recently where I discussed our project of writing UI
	apps for X11, MSW & Char Mode terminals. If you would like a
	copy, I can try to find the slides and make one set for you.
	
	The most important thing we found was a good design is very important. 
	If it was well thought out and extensible, then it would be simple to 
	port from one UI to another.

Wesley Cheng
wescheng@hpcc01.corp.hp.com