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From: nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.windows.x.motif,comp.windows.open-look
Subject: Re: Toolkit for Open Look *and* OSF/Motif Look and Feel
Keywords: toolkit, Open Look, OSF/Motif, GUI
Message-ID: <1991Feb21.184826.11191@alphalpha.com>
Date: 21 Feb 91 18:48:26 GMT
References: <1057@attc.UUCP> <1991Feb19.210822.26826@visix.com> <1991Feb20.170617.15372@cs.umn.edu> <1991Feb20.194928.3022@Solbourne.COM>
Organization: asi
Lines: 49

In article <1991Feb20.194928.3022@Solbourne.COM> imp@Solbourne.COM (Warner Losh) writes:
>After writing many OI programs, I have not found a case where I had to
>put something like
>	if (I'm in motif)
>		do brain-dead things
>	else if I'm in Openlook
>		do other brain-dead things
>in any of the code that I have written.  Modulo funky "look", the
>Openlook and Motif style guides are not really that different.  There
>are many "feel" issues that the toolkit takes care of and that I as a
>toolkit user need never worry about.  It may take some careful
>planning, but it usually isn't that big an issue.

Okay.  Presumbably you didn't put any buttons in the menubar, since
you aren't supposed to do that in Motif.  Do you have a Help pulldown in the
menubar?  Do the entries have the same wording in Motif as in Open Look?
How about the menubar, is the order of pulldowns (when applicable)
File, Edit, View, Options, Help?  How about the contents of the menus?
Are the entries in Motif order with the Motif specified names?  In the Edit
menu (assuming you have one) are the entries in the Motif order
with the correct Motif mnemonics and accelerators?  Are those the
same as the ones specfied for Open Look?  When you bring up a 
dialog box which the user may want to keep around (Query, for
instance, in our mail application) do you put an Apply button in the
dialog for Motif and a Pushpin for Open Look? Is Mouse Button 3
the "display popup" button in both Motif and Open Look?

And given that all of that works, do you have the underlying
access to the toolkit that allows you to do things like have
context-sensitive popups, cache commonly used dialogs and
windows, put in timeouts so that the screen is updated before
an operation occurs, modify an interface object so it doesn't
take up as much room (or behaves slightly differently), change
the translations in text widgets so that tab in a readonly text
widget goes to the next field instead of inserting....  And of
course have it all work in both toolkits?

This stuff about being able to do two GUIs is nonsense.  Not because
it isn't possible.  Not because it isn't easy.  But simply because
WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO IT!  It's a waste of time, resources and it
hurts the industry.
-- 
Alfalfa Software, Inc.		|	Poste:  The EMail for Unix
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I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.