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From: mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Window Toolkits and Systems for a bunch of systems.
Keywords: Window Toolkits, Window Systems, Portability
Message-ID: <11291@jade.BBN.COM>
Date: 21 Jul 88 18:03:47 GMT
References: <732@muddcs.Claremont.EDU> <18311@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau)
Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 42

In comp.windows.misc, bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) writes:
>In article <732@muddcs.Claremont.EDU> lam@muddcs.Claremont.EDU (Grace Lam) writes:
>>Are there any graphics toolkits around that can help?  For example a
>>drawing and widget toolkit that provides a common interface to a
>>variety of window systems, so I only have to write graphics code
>>ONCE.
>
>This is what Open Look is supposed to provide.  
>In theory, there will be common set of objects and toolkit calls for
>you to code.  

According to all the information I've been able to get from both Sun and
AT&T, this is (unfortunately) *not* what Open Look is supposed to provide.

Open Look will be a specification for an application "personality" (I hate
the term "look and feel"), rather than any one toolkit or set of toolkits.
There will be toolkits that implementation the Open Look personality built
on top of several host window systems -- NeWS and X are the first two that
have been announced.

However, and this is a big however, the Xt and NDE implementations of the 
Open Look personality will NOT provide applications with source level 
compatibility across the underlying window systems.  The Xt-based toolkit 
will provide one programming interface, and the NDE another.  If you want
an application to run in both environments, you still have to write it 
twice.

Personally, I think this was a bad decision.  There's a great need for 
toolkits that are window-system independent, at least from the software
developer's point of view.  We have developed one such toolkit internally
for building applications that run under either SunView or X11, and while
it's not a simple task, I think it's certainly possible to do a reasonable
job, and I don't quite understand why none of the commercial players are
pursuing this as an option.  

(I wonder if SunView might not have a chance at becoming such a thing, if 
it's really true that SunView 2.0 has been implemented on top of X11.  The 
SunView programming interface is really nice, and I don't think it would 
be THAT hard to do a SunView toolkit for NeWS.
--
 Matt Landau			"Don't make me angry.
 mlandau@bbn.com		    You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."