Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!apollo!nazgul
From: nazgul@apollo.COM (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Motif on an Apollo
Message-ID: <42e8c584.1b147@apollo.COM>
Date: 28 Apr 89 21:42:00 GMT
References: <8904241457.AA00540@lnic1.hprc.uh.edu> <1235@novavax.UUCP>
Reply-To: nazgul@apollo.COM (Kee Hinckley)
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 77

In article <1235@novavax.UUCP> weiner@novavax.UUCP (Bob Weiner) writes:
>In article <8904241457.AA00540@lnic1.hprc.uh.edu> wescott@LNIC1.HPRC.UH.EDU (Andrew M. Wescott) writes:
>
>>   Hey does anyone wonder what OSF/Motif coupled with the
>>   DM would look like?  Well take a look at pages 230-231
>>   of the May 1989 BYTE MAGAZINE.
>>
>>   I'm ready!
>
>I have to put a couple cents in here.  I have not seen Byte but I have
>heard Motif 'looks' really nice.  Fine, pretty 3-D windows and buttons.
>What we need is not only easy to use programs but powerful ones.
>
>Examples:
>
>interface.  Who wants to bet Motif's style guide does not suggest a
>powerful keyboard model?  Just look at all the silly macro makers on
>Macintoshes and you'll understand how widely ignored an issue this is.

Motif supports full keyboard access to all of the functionality.  In
addition to the standard "accelerators" there are mnemonics for pulling
down all menu items, selecting from lists, moving from one button to
the next, and so on.  Believe me, after six years using an Apollo I
am not about to move to an interface that doesn't let me have a next-window,
pop and shell key, or one that forces me to grab my mouse everytime I
want to do something useful.  That was one of the things I stressed when
I worked on the UEC selection team at OSF.

What Motif does *not* do is have the kind of macro programming functionality
that the Display Manager gets you.  There are ways to add this functionality
to X and Motif in particular, but it is non-trivial.  (See "An Object Oriented
Extension Language for Integrating Disparate Applications", Interact '87).


>aid portability).  Unless the OSF is ready to release a complete
>object-oriented development environment that supports Motif application
>development, this represents a major developer headache.  That

The X Intrinsics, on which Motif is based, support an object oriented
model.  We are in the process of integrating Motif with Open Dialogue
to provide even more object oriented and dialogue management features.
In either case programming an interface with Motif should *substantially*
reduce development time over trying to do one from scratch in *any*
graphics toolkit.

>How come no one is talking about the hypertextual capabilities of HP's
>New Wave which is part of Motif.  There some real progress could be
>made.  Is it because few people understand this technology?

Motif has nothing to do with New Wave.  New Wave was not submitted and
does not currently (so far as I know) run on Unix.  Motif has the same
*feel* as the Presentation Manager, but that's about the only thing
that relates them.

>SUN reps claim that IBM (the guys OSF paid about $80 million for AIX)
>has publicly stated that they do not need to develop OSF-compatible
>environments since they already have AIX and can develop it themselves!

So?  This whole question of whose OS your are going to run is really
nonsense.  So long as they are Posix/XOpen compatible do you really
care?  Yes, certain things would be nice.  Shared libraries, typed
file systems, etc..  When those things get added we need to standardize
on them too.  But as to whether you bought it from AT&T or Sun or OSF
or IBM?  You're going to spend a lot more time trying to port your
User Interface from Open Look to Motif than you ever would porting the
OS parts.

All opinions are mine, of course.

						Kee Hinckley
						User Environment
						Apollo Computer
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