Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!hplabs!hplabsz!mayer
From: mayer@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Niels Mayer)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Xr11 - should I use this?
Keywords: Portability
Message-ID: <2414@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 6 Oct 88 03:02:40 GMT
References: <9927@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Reply-To: mayer@hplabsz.UUCP (Niels Mayer)
Distribution: na
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 45

In article <9927@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> alan@jane.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Alan S. Mazer) writes:
>I need advice.  With the R2 distribution we've got there's a wonderful manual
>on Xr11, which I assume is Hewlett-Packard's toolkit (doesn't seem to say that
>anywhere explicitly).  

Actually, HP's latest and best contributed toolkit is HP X Widgets
(/usr/include/Xw, /usr/lib/libXw.a). This uses the R2 Xt intrinsics,
aka, the "regular X 11 toolkit". It comes with reasonable
documentation. 

> I'm torn between using the "regular" X 11 toolkit which
>doesn't have this nice manual, and the Xr11 toolkit which does.  Am I getting
>myself locked in somewhere by using this "non-standard" toolkit?

Yes. Use the HP Xwidgets instead. They are quite spiffy (especially
when using the 3D feature), and thoroughly blow away the athena
widgets and the sony widgets.  I believe Xr11 is just for backwards
compatibility with people that used HP's Xr toolkit under X10.

>non-standard because somehow I doubt that anyone will support this except
>Hewlett-Packard.  Should I forge ahead with the "standard" toolkit?  Any and
>all advice is welcome.
>

Since the HP Xwidgets are based on the Xt intrinsics (which are an X
consortium standard), and they are the most functionally complete and
most bug-free widget set currently available, it stands to reason that
they may become a standard.  Since the source to the HP Xwidgets is
publically available from expo.lcs.mit.edu and will be included on the
R3 tape, I would assume that part of the support for the emerging
standard could come from the users of the toolkit, as well as HP. This
is the sort of support that has made gnuemacs a standard editor, and X
a standard windowing system. Also, consider the fact that you can
begin prototyping your X11 applications NOW using the HP Xwidgets,
rather than waiting for OpenLook or DECWindows to materialize from
their currently vaporous state.

-- Niels Mayer, HPLabs.

PS: These opinions are my own. I don't work for the division that made
the HP Xwidgets; I'm just an X11 applications writer and found HP's Xwidgets
to be more useful than any other toolkits i've encountered in X10 and X11. 

PPS: For an example of a simple HP Xwidgets application, check out
expo.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/xwebster.tar.Z