Conference bulova::decw_jan-89_to_nov-90

873.0. "The AT&T OPEN LOOK Toolkit" by CASEE::LACROIX (Gone with the wind) Fri Jun 02 1989 14:41

    I was reading the January issue of XNextEvent, and found that there is
    an article on the AT&T OPEN LOOK Toolkit. The set of widgets they
    provide isn't very different from the one we support (or that Motif
    will have), but they have a couple of very interesting features which
    I'm sure they'll be happy to use in competitive situation; I have
    extracted some of these below: there's some neat stuff.

    Dynamic Resources:

    A hidden widget automatically included in every application built on
    top of the OPEN LOOK toolkit is used to establish communication (thru
    normal inter-client communication techniques it seems) with what they
    call the work space manager. Users can thus use the workspace to change
    colors, fonts, etc: every single application sharing the server will be
    notified, and the colors and fonts it uses will be dynamically changed!
    This is GREAT.

    Context Sensitive Help:

    Seems to be done like in the DEC toolkit, with a twist: help frames can
    associated to a widget class, to an X window, to some a portion of a
    string in a text widget, etc...

    Widgets are Device Independent:

    The OPEN LOOK toolkit widgets are device independent: when drawing
    stuff, they use a world coordinate system (with values converted to
    pixels thru a set of convenience routine). The widgets which use
    pixmaps are provided with a wide range of pixmaps for various screen
    sizes and resolution. There's also different fonts like we do. I don't
    know how well this stuff works, but it sure is interesting. Another
    interesting thing they do is use a layer on top of the intrinsics
    translation manager 'that virtualizes the mouse buttons and keyboard'.
    The example they give is as follows:

    You would normally have something like: Button1<Enter>: highlight ()
    With their toolkit, you say SelectBtn<Enter>: highlight(). Using the
    workspace manager, users can redefine SelectBtn to be Button 2 instead,
    with all applications dynamically doing the right thing. Not terribly
    useful, but neat.

    Regards,
    Denis.

    
    How does one recieve XtNextEvent? Is it a mailing list, pub, etc...??

> Dynamic Resources:
>    ...
> This is GREAT.

Not as I understand it.  The effect of this is that it completely overrides the
Xdefaults mechanism.  Willing to give that up?

RE: .2

Since we don't support Xdefaults, yes, I'm willing to give it up in favor of an
integrated, user-friendly, dynamic, and supported mechanism for doing 
customization.  Right now, we don't provide users any supported way to do
customization, aside from the few crumbs that individual applications have
deigned to throw out.  Xdefaults is there, but on VMS, we don't give the users
the information necessary to take advantage of it.

--PSW

>> Dynamic Resources:
>>    ...
>> This is GREAT.
>
> Not as I understand it.  The effect of this is that it completely overrides the
> Xdefaults mechanism.  Willing to give that up?

    First of all, I'm not 100% sure that their implementation of dynamic
    resources completely overrides Xdefaults: I'll try to get my hands on
    the OPEN LOOK sources first, and see how it works, or hack something to
    see for sure what can be done ;-)

    Second, the Xdefaults mechanism is pure hackery and certainly doesn't
    deserve to be professionaly supported on systems we keep hyping as the
    ultimate office automation environment. In a word, it's completely
    brain damaged; This is pretty much a rat hole anyway.

    Denis.

>    How does one recieve XtNextEvent? Is it a mailing list, pub, etc...??

    The newsletter's name is spelled XNextEvent, not XtNextEvent, showing
    its focus on The X Window System, and not on toolkits ;-) it is the
    official newsletter of XUG, the X User's Group:

    XUG
    c/o Integrated Computer Solutions
    163 Harvard Street
    Cambridge, MA 02139

    If you are located in France, you can get in touch with AFUX, an X
    User's Group affiliated to the XUG and run by a friend in Valbonne:

    AFUX
    Residence Les Pins, Bat D1
    Les Semboules
    06600 Antibes, FRANCE

    Tel: 93 65 77 71
    Email: daniel@mirsa.inria.fr