Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!news.cs.indiana.edu!samsung!sdd.hp.com!usc!apple!ig!presto.ig.com!dow From: dow@presto.ig.com (Christopher Dow) Newsgroups: bionet.software Subject: Re: X-Windows, InterViews, and molecular biology software Message-ID: Date: 18 Feb 91 05:17:29 GMT References: <1991Feb18.031954.17846@cs.umn.edu> <1991Feb15.202358.1984@cs.umn.edu> <1991Feb13.182415.22449@phri.nyu.edu> Sender: news@presto.ig.com Reply-To: dow@presto.ig.com (Christopher Dow) Organization: IntelliGenetics, Inc. Lines: 58 Nntp-Posting-Host: presto.ig.com (Whew! we've managed to keep the tone considerabley more civilized than that of other bionet groups lately [I won't mention names]) Final statement on gcc: We (Engineering at IG) have found that it is somewhat difficult to get gcc-compiled code to work with non-gcc-compiled libraries (a more technical explanation should be held elsewhere, but it has to do with differing ways to return structs on the stack). Unix: Well, it would be nice if departments would hire programmers to support unix and the source code to products that are distributed commercially or free of charge, but my own experience with organizations at two different universities -University of Oklahoma and University of Wisconsin-and my second-hand knowledge of another department at the latter, lead me to believe that it is difficult, if not impossible, to coordinate such efforts. Let me qualify that by saying that this is obviously not a good statistical sampling, and I'm sure that many, many, examples to the contrary exist. In general, I think that unix will only win the OS war (OS/2 1.0 2.0 3.0 , VMS, OSF/1, SysVR4, BSD 4.4, ad nauseum) if it becomes more palletable to the run-of-the-mill computer user. Certainly if any software pertaining to this group is to be commercialized, it will only be successful if it works in a world that the user can understand and deal with. X-windows: Actually, X clients have come to DOS, QuarterDeck has announced DesqView/X, an X server and multitasking environment which can allow clients to run on the same DOS machine as the server. I think this is truly a breakthrough, although I would rather see DOS roll over and die quietly. As an aside, some info on my personal preferrences: Windowing System: X Toolkit: Motif OS: SunOS Computer: Sparc of any flavor C Compiler: gcc Anything else: (5th Amendment, Const. of U.S. ;-) Also, I think that InterViews is extremely useful, and I find at least one of its demo programs to be invaluable. The opinions I have expressed in this thread are based on my experiences in a molecular biology lab (as the programmer), and making my living at writing/supporting software for such labs for more than four years. Chris Dow IntelliGenetics Software Engineer 700 East El Camino Real (ICBMnet address obsoleted by TLAM technology, address now suffices) Mountain View, Ca. 94040 dow@presto.ig.com (415) 962-7320