Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!nucsrl!tellab5!vpnet!trdlnk!psm
From: psm@trdlnk.uucp (Paul Stephen Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  Evaluating GUI tools (not quite a summary)
Message-ID: <1991May24.212129.23357@trdlnk.uucp>
Date: 24 May 91 21:21:29 GMT
References: <9105171951.AA29530@rapier>
Organization: TradeLink Corp.
Lines: 54

In article <9105171951.AA29530@rapier> matt@saber.COM writes:
>Having at this point some accumulated some reasonable amount of experience
>with the OI toolkit, let me offer a different viewpoint from the opinions
>expressed here.
>

We've been evaluating OI here also ...

>One subtle difference between OI and InterViews:  In InterViews, as in most
>X11 user interface toolkits, the object hierarchy and the window hierarchy
>are isomorphic.  In OI, that's not true.  The object hierarchy and the window
>hierarchy are independent of each other.  
>
>It's a little hard to explain in a few sentences why this is a good thing, 
>but after programming in OI for a few months, I'm convinced that it's a 
>fundamental advancement in toolkit design.  It allows you to design and 
>implement an interface in terms of logical interface objects instead of 
>thinking about window hierarchies, and provides tremendous flexibility
>in building user interfaces.  It also allows more dynamic runtime behavior
>than any other approach I've seen -- the ability to dynamically reparent 
>any object to any other object at runtime and have all of the low-level
>window details handled for you is just fantastic.
>

I've used all the major toolkits (OLIT, Motif, and Xaw) and I'd have to say
OI is by far the simplest use and has the greatest flexiblity. The ability
to dynamically reparent any object is a big plus! 

>> = OI is now sold to AT&T and the
>> = price is high, and it seems that very few people are using it. IV is a
>> = free GUI from Standford University, it has a mailing list
>> = (interviews@interviews.stanford.edu) and the source seems pretty good.
>
>The lack of a binary distribution of OI is certainly a problem at the 
>moment, but that's supposed to be getting fixed "soon".
>

Since my workstation is a S4000 from Solbourne, it comes with OI.

>In fact, when you get into the sources, you find that OI makes extremely good
>use of C++ as a language.  It would have to in order to provide the kind of
>performance it does.  (I'm finding that apps created with the most recent
>release of OI are generally slightly smaller than the corresponding OSF/Motif
>or OLIT applications, while providing BOTH GUI styles and more flexibility in
>behavior.)  It's also pretty easy to subclass almost any OI class you want.
>

We've ported a few applications from Xaw to OI and found the OI versions to
be smaller. 
-- 
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|Steve Murphy:     ...!uunet!tellab5!vpnet!trdlnk!psm or psm@trdlnk           |
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