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Re: Wt/Motif Interface (was: Real Number on PV-WAVE) [message #18100 is a reply to message #18099]

Mon, 29 November 1999 00:00

Mark D. Williams
Messages: 15
Registered: November 1999

Junior Member

"R. Kyle Justice" wrote:

>> Then you must not be developing "elegant" user-interfaces through
>> direct calls to the Motif toolkit via the Wt functions. This is
>> the epitome of "obscure."
>> But even when you have found the little-known resource that does just
>> what you want, there is only a 50/50 chance that setting it will have
>> any effect.

>> It's too bad IDL users don't have the "joy" of going through this process
> since they

>> don't have the illusion of so many interface design choices :-)

Just as you note, it is a tradeoff between obscurity/difficulty and
flexibility.
For the
additional flexibility that the Wt layer affords, I don't mind putting
up with
some
obscurity and having to deal with the O'Reilly Motif "tomes". What the
Ww layer
gives you in cross-platform portability (it is the only interface design
layer
that
works consistently on Windows) you give up in interface flexibility.

There are some historical reasons behind Ww being the only supported
layer
on both Motif and Windows. When VNI first developed PV-WAVE on the
Windows platform, they ported a subset of their Wt functions from Motif
to
the Microsoft Foundation Classes. How's that for obscure? I don't envy
the
programmers that accomplished that their jobs. The subset of Wt/Motif
that
VNI chose to port to Windows was exactly the functions necessary to get
Ww to work properly. So it is a good bet that if VNI is using
a Wt function in the Ww layer functions, that particular Wt function is
supported on Windows, too. At least, that Wt function, in the specific
way
that it is called from the Ww function is supported :-)

Now, I suppose this is all fine and good for someone coming to the task
with a good familiarity with UNIX/Motif. It is admittedly problematic
and
not quite desirable for the programmer coming to PV-WAVE from either
a Visual Basic or MSVC++ background.

Regards,
Mark Williams
Resource Engineering, Inc.

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[Message index]

		Re: Wt/Motif Interface (was: Real Number on PV-WAVE) By: rkj on Tue, 30 November 1999 00:00
		Re: Wt/Motif Interface (was: Real Number on PV-WAVE) By: Mark D. Williams on Mon, 29 November 1999 00:00
		Re: Wt/Motif Interface (was: Real Number on PV-WAVE) By: Mark D. Williams on Mon, 29 November 1999 00:00
		Re: Wt/Motif Interface (was: Real Number on PV-WAVE) By: rkj on Thu, 02 December 1999 00:00
		Re: Wt/Motif Interface (was: Real Number on PV-WAVE) By: Mark D. Williams on Wed, 01 December 1999 00:00
		Re: Wt/Motif Interface (was: Real Number on PV-WAVE) By: nittler on Tue, 14 December 1999 00:00

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