My original question:
Presently all of our applications run under SUN's openlook
window system. Since SUN has announced that they will
conform to the OSF/MOTIF window system, some companies are
releasing their new releases of applications only under MOTIF
for the SUN platforms.
As I understand it, Sun will package OSF/MOTIF with future releases
of Solaris. My platform is presently SunOS 4.1.2 and I don't plan to
upgrade to SOLARIS 2.X (with MOTIF) before year end or early 94.
In the meantime, is it possible to run MOTIF applications in
the OpenLook environment and what do I need to do so?
========================================================================
Everyone mentioned that it is possible to run motif applications in
an Openlook environment without doing any modifications.
Christian Lawrence (<cal@soac.bellcore.com>) sent me a thourough explanation
which I quote:
"OPEN LOOK is just a concept or more officially a style guide .... how things
should be (i.e. button clicks, scroll bars etc.)
MOTIF is just a concept or more officially a style guide......... how things
should be (i.e. button clicks, scroll bars etc.)
Both of these are essentially user interface requirements documents.
These concepts define windowing and its interaction at a high level. The
fact that vendors choose X11 as *THE* platform to implement OPENLOOK/MOTIF
applications is really of no consequence.
OpenWindows is a package that adheres to OPENLOOK and is based entirely on the
X11 protocol as specified by MIT.
You can't really buy MOTIF per se. What you can buy is a window manager that
adheres to MOTIF (i.e. mwm). You can also buy the libraries and/or source if
you wish to develop MOTIF-based applications (e.g. FrameMaker).
Bottom line is : X11-based applications should run regardless of higher
layer implmentations. In about 99.95 % of the cases, I
have found this to be true.
There is the occasional wierdness. For example, if I run the Openwindows X
server (xnews) with the mwm window manager and and I try to "capture" a graphic
in FrameMaker (essentially xwd), it doesn't work exactly right. In theory, it
should perform as intended.....but sometimes there are bugs and sometimes there
are version mismatches.
If you switch to mwm and its dynamically linked you'll need the libraries also.
You could continue to use xnews (with its proprietary postscript extension) as
your server *OR* you could get the stock version from MIT."
Some mentioned that you can buy the Motif package for around 200$ US which
includes binaries, library and window manager. For around 1000$ US, you can
also have the sources included.
Thanks to all who responded.
Yves.Morin@BComeau.Hydro.Qc.CA
Steve Hanson <hanson@pogo.fnal.gov>
chuck-strickland@orl.mmc.com
phil@dgbt.doc.ca (Phil Blanchfield)
"Susan Thielen" <thielen@irus.rri.uwo.ca>
Mark.McIntosh@Engr.UVic.CA
rlg@rex.West.Sun.COM (Randy Gregor)
Peter Shipley <shipley@tfs.COM>
thomas@wiwi.hu-berlin.de (Thomas Koetter)
Randy J. Ott(ROtt@Logicon.COM)
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