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From: cjc@ulysses.att.com (Chris Calabrese)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.motif,comp.windows.open-look,comp.windows.x,comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: Question for net.views column in UNIX Today!
Message-ID: <14587@ulysses.att.com>
Date: 8 Apr 91 13:28:18 GMT
References: <9104020203.AA00284@bud.cs.ubc.ca.ubc.ca> <14566@ulysses.att.com> <1991Apr3.052058.6309@alphalpha.com> <1991Apr05.053837.13194@convex.com>
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
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In article <1991Apr05.053837.13194@convex.com> datri@convex.com (Anthony A. Datri) writes:
>>>If a commercial application writer really wants to target Motif and
>>>Open Look, they should use something like the Solbourne toolkit which
>>>provides both Motif and Open Look with the same binary (this is not a
>
>As I understand it, OI requires the use of c++, which makes it fairly
>unpalatable.
>--
>datri@convex.com

Why?  C++ compilers under UNIX are probably a whole lot more uniform
in operation than C compilers.  I keep hearing people insisting that
C++ is the way of the future.  Here's an opertunity to put their money
where their mouths are.

I don't think that un-availability of compilers is a problem (the AT&T
cfront translator (and relabelings of it) is probably more widely
distributed than ANSI compilers).

If the problem is a learning curve, that's the good part about C++ (in
comparison to ADA, Smalltalk, Modula2, etc).  The people working on
the back-end pieces can do their work in C.  Only the people doing
the actual UI work need know anything about C++ stuff
(and main() has to be compiled using the C++ compiler to get all the
static constructors to work).

How unpalatable this is probably depends mostly on the size and age of
the existing code for the application.  On a new application, it
shouldn't be any roadblock at all.  On existing application that
someone wants to throw a new UI onto, it depends on how independently
the back-end pieces were designed from the existing UI's.

Name:			Christopher J. Calabrese
Brain loaned to:	AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
att!ulysses!cjc		cjc@ulysses.att.com
Obligatory Quote:	``pher - gr. vb. to schlep.  phospher - to schlep light.philosopher - to schlep thoughts.''