Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!emory!wuarchive!uunet!shelby!msi.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!brsmith From: brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) Newsgroups: bionet.software Subject: Re: X-Windows, InterViews, and molecular biology software Message-ID: <1991Feb15.202358.1984@cs.umn.edu> Date: 15 Feb 91 20:23:58 GMT References: <1991Feb13.182415.22449@phri.nyu.edu> Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept. Lines: 58 In dow@presto.ig.com (Christopher Dow) writes: > On the issue of C++: > Currently, in most available implimentations, C++ is a >translated language. Get g++ and gdb. G++ is a native C++ compiler (NOT a translator), and gdb has c++ debugging support built in (recent versions, anyway). See their manuals for complete details. >[...] Also, C code generated by C++ translators is not known for its >speed. Searching a 30 MegaBase chromosome is not something you want >to do with a program that was written in C++. Depends on the program, methinks. You can, after all, write straight C code and compile it with a C++ compiler if you like. I'm of the opinion that well-written C++ should be *faster* than comparable C code - because the function disambiguation and subclassing takes place at compile time. I don't have any numbers to back me up, though. > On the issue of X: >X is a very large system (the Sever is about 2 MegaBytes on a Sun >workstation), so the number of platforms it can be ported to is small >(i.e., no 8080's and it won't work well with 8088's). Hmmm. My server (Xsun) is only at 1.3meg right now. That's smaller than my editor! (GNU emacs, of course - ok, it's a little bloated) Still, that's not *large* for a Unix system. No, it's not going to run on an ancient PC, but most Unix workstations being produced now can deal with it (and many have it pre-installed, in some form). > On the specific case of InterViews: > InterViews is a nice academic environment. By academic, I >mean unsupported. If something goes wrong either you have to fix it, >or wait until the author does (this is from experience). The same is true of the free distribution of X available from MIT. BUT, when you have source code (and when the software is that well written and tested), support isn't as much of an issue. Also, if I remember correctly, the X Consortium is adopting InterViews as the default X-C++ interface. I'm unsure of the exact details, but such a move would place InterViews right alongside X as a standard. >I hope that the two main groups working to standardize Unix and >Unix-like operating systems (Unix International and the Open Software >Foundation) will take the needs of users to be able to maintain the >system into account, and I know that NeXT already has. Funny, that: NeXT doesn't even allow you to use X as the default windowing system. You have to run it (at best) in a window under NeXTStep. I don't consider that very helpful. I should mention that this is hardly an unbiased opionion (even if there is such a beast). I program for and love InterViews and C++. -- Brian brsmith@cs.umn.edu