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From: fgreco@dprg-330.GOVt.shearson.COM (Frank Greco)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: XView info/opinions
Message-ID: <9012102338.AA16634@islanders.>
Date: 10 Dec 90 23:38:37 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 59

> 
> 	We are looking into porting some of our SunViews applications into
> X.  We could simply rewrite them using Xlib or (preferably for me)
> InterViews, but then I heard about XView.  It's my understanding that
> XView, in addition to being a full-fledged X toolkit, was designed
> to facilitate converting SunViews applications to X -- even to the
> extent that (this is where my memory or understanding may be way off)
> there exists a translator that converts SunViews calls to XView calls,
> and that this translator is part of the XView package.
> Is my understanding at all correct?

	Yes.  XView is an OPENLOOK-compliant Xlib-based X "toolkit".
	For applications that do not rely that much on pixrect-based graphics,
	or perform many low-level Sunview operations, its an extremely easy 
	port from Sunview to XView.  I've ported many (high-level)
	Sunview apps in literally days (one was a one-hour job!). 
	There were several apps that have taken me several months due
	to the low-level interaction between the app, Sunview/Pixrect
	and a relational database.

	Not having any docs on these apps didn't exactly help either  ;->.

	The "convert_to_xview" script (sed-stuff) that comes with the
	XView distribution does a fairly good job of Sunview-to-Xview conversion.
	I've found that after running this script, hand-tuning is 
	definitely necessary, since some Sunview attributes are either defunct,
	rendered moot or just different.  convert_to_xview seemed to do 
	a decent job  of flagging these down and even inserted C-style
	comments indicating the area in question.  It's not perfect,
	but for a bunch of sed scripts, it was surprisingly thorough.

	I've also noticed that for new X application pgmrs, XView
	is very easy to learn (the attribute-value "little language"
	method of passing parameters also helps in this regard).

	The downside is the static subclassing (not really XView's problem,
	its a C-issue....A C++ interface will allay this problem somewhat).

	If you're looking for a relatively painless port from Sunview,
	there's no question, XView is *the* toolkit of choice.


> ... I presume that XView maintains it's own look-and-
> feel, close to SunView and not close to, say, Motif or OpenLook --
> this is not important to us, though we more or less want to stay away
> from OpenLook.

	Sorry.  XView is OPENLOOK-compliant.  I'd say mostly Level 1 and
	about half Level 2 OL compliant...please no flames on precision ;-)

>Any help would be appreciated, including XView's availability/price

	XView src is available on expo.lcs.mit.edu and the pre-built libraries
	and docs are available with the OpenWindows product from Sun.
	UCSD may get the OpenWindows src heavily discounted; I'd check
	with your local Sun sales rep. about this.


	Frank G.