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Death of CDE & Motif?
I just found this feature on ZDNet which talks about what will happen with CDE and MOTIF. The author wonders whether they will be replaced by QT or GTK. What do you think? Will corporates switch to QT or GTK? (Both libraries got support for almost all platforms which Motif has). What do you think QT & GTK are missing to be a true replacement for Motif?
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As a developer of commercial software I appreciate the solid standard that CDE provides accross platforms. It is not perfect by any stretch but it simplifies things to be able to expect the same desktop everywhere. That said, I use fvwm2 for all of my personal hosts.
KK4SFV
CDE and Motif were developed by The Open Group. While TOG still sells them, they ceased all development back in the summer of 1998, at the same time they shut down X development and pretty much everything else other than licensing and branding.
Disclaimer: I am a former employee of The Open Group. I worked at the Research Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is now a much smaller operation in Woburn where the few engineers who didn't quit still work.
If you concentrate...you can become....a NINJA.
Speaking as someone who is porting a Motif on Tru64/AIX app over to LessTif on Linux, I say: "I dearly hope so".
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I think QT will end up getting more corporate support due to its association with KDE, which seems to have a more professional image, compared to other desktops. I might be wrong, though...
Of all the several hundred or so apps out there that use the GTK library, they require either 1.0.x, 1.2.x, or 1.2.x-x blah blah blah. Basically you need to install several different versions of GTK just to use the apps you want. GTK development is too active to go mainstream, and if there ever was a hope for the average PC user to run linux, they couldn't handle it all. GTK is also one of the most bloated toolkits availible, and it is ugly. Add a theme, you say? Sure, if everyone has 128mb of ram, and a P2 350 or better, it just might be bearable. But most users wouldn't be able to take advantage of themes, and GTK is just plain OOGLY without them.
If you concentrate...you can become....a PANCAKE.
If they were to get rid of motif and cde for one of the newer ones, I would go with GTK. I have used both GTK and Qt, and although I really liked Qt's c++ design, GTK is more open source and uses the GPL. Plus GTK has bindings on many languages and also soon to be more platforms such as win32. Qt already has this, but if your willing to use Qt you have to use their QPL, and if you want to develop windows portable software you have to pay the fee to register it.
Are you a ninja?
Corporate people like to spend money. So, the only way to make GTK and QT be a success is to charge large sums of money for them. Remember, to be an "Open Standard", one must be required to pay money to be called "standards compliant". Well, atleast this is what The Open Group believes. And all those other standards groups want you to pay a few zillion for documentation on the standard. Oh joy. I love standards.
I am a ninja. I do not wish to be a pancake.
Not for a long time anyway.
As fast as the tech market moves, I think one thing that linux has shown me, (through the long series of such-and-such company adopting linux, and so on) is that companies are sure good at dragging ass when they want to.
And they've got a lot of motivation to. Proclaiming the end of CDE and Motif and so on is not something that Triteal wants to hear.
One of the things that I've noticed about linux and GNU software seemingly "pushing things out of the way" is that generally, it happens in a spot where a company isn't *too* afraid of giving ground.
HP/UX, Solaris, and all those other UNIXen are still extremely entrenched in corporations. Just because linux does exist in companies, and just because people do use it, doesn't mean that people can go around proclaiminig "ding dong the witch is dead" spouting out that such and such extremely popular software package for UNIX is on the way out because of some free software replacement. Even for packages that are non-free, it takes a long time to get mindshare and get people using the software, and it can take just as long to get them out of it. That QT and GTK+ are making inroads is interesting, but that's quite different from seriously threatening the EXISTANCE of an alternative.
Also, linux is moving into some of the spots where otherwise solaris or HP/UX might be used. But do HP and Sun *really* care if they don't sell copies of Solaris and HP/UX? Sure, that's revenue that they're losing but at the same time, they make their money selling HARDWARE not software. So it's really not that much of a tragedy if some of their software gets pushed a bit to the side.
But with CDE, you're going up against pure software companies that have all of their revenue to lose if they let themselves be pushed to the side, and because of that, I'm betting that they'll "fight harder"
I'm skeptical...
Regardless of what you may have read above, I agree with you. Support the Free Software Foundation http://www.gnu.org/
Well, for one, both QT and GTK lack the butt-ugliness of Motif. Secondly, they lack the quality that they're not as akin to bashing your head against the wall when programming with them. Thirdly, they're not archaic. That's about all I can think of..
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I am a pancake and do not wish to be a ninja
Me and my trusty sidekick waffle boy will defeat any Ninja you can muster!!!
Motif fares a little bit better, but heaven help you if an existing widget can't be goaded into doing what you want.
For example, there still isn't a way of easily doing something like a password text field in Motif. The sanctioned ways involve pathetic kludges. Still.
It's slow. Its layout engine is admittedly a really nifty idea, but make a complex form full of widgets and sit back in amazement as your sparcstation sits and meditates for five seconds before the stupid window comes up.
And it hasn't improved the slightest in the past five years. It's stagnant dead crap. You couldn't pay me (anymore) to develop for it. It's history.
1. Open source
2. Low (zero) cost (because of #1)
3. GTK is much easier to write for than Motif
4. It's also much easier to maintain on multiple platforms. GTK's design is pretty good (maybe not fantastic, but definitely easier than Motif)
And GTK isn't the only alternative nowadays. Motif has no advantages anymore for new development and because of maintenance I think it's even advantageous to port to another kit in most cases.
----------------
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that was awesome d00d. did you wash after?
"Of all the several hundred or so apps out there that use the GTK library, they require either 1.0.x, 1.2.x, or 1.2.x-x blah blah blah."
Ever seen a lot of the KDE/Qt apps? They say, "Don't use such and such a version of Qt because it's not ready yet or the APIs are different" and so on. It's the same thing for Qt, it's just that there are probably a lot of GTK+ apps out there that haven't been updated yet. That's not the toolkits fault.
"Basically you need to install several different versions of GTK just to use the apps you want."
Bzzzt! Wrong! Just about any application worth using has been updated for the 1.2.x series, which has been out for quite a while. If it doesn't run with 1.2.x, then chances are you don't want to run it anyway.
"GTK is also one of the most bloated toolkits availible, and it is ugly"
I can't argue with your sense of aesthetics, since that's your choice, but you're wrong about it being bloated. I get the feeling that you're basing that entirely off of your theming argument - and I can tell you, you don't need anywhere near those requirements you listed, and you can stay away from 90% of the overhead if you just don't use pixmapped themes. The flexibility that pixmapped themes gives you is something you have to pay for. If you read some of the info on gtk.themes.org, you'd know this.
Regardless of what you may have read above, I agree with you. Support the Free Software Foundation http://www.gnu.org/
Chances are that if they are wring for UNIX it will also depend on which UNIX they write for. Solaris still uses Motif / CDE.
Something to notice is that companies that write for Linux are going with gtk or qt and/or something that they have inhouse. Just look at Corel.... only time will really tell ....
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NO!! I did not wash my buttocks!!!!!
Well, in some long forgotton pagan language it does. But seriously, Gtk and GNOME will own all the other pansy ass inflexible non object based development toolkits and environments. Like Motif, CDE, AND Qt.
If you dont beleive this, wait a few years. And play with an ORB. mmmm.. tasty ORB's..
When i am not on a plate waiting to be eaten I am aout in the darkest night killing pussy ninjas.
My mother was also my pancake. You are not my father so you may not eat my mother.
What are the worst parts about programming with Motif? Honestly I've NEVER heard anything positive about it, I've never heard of somebody saying "Oh those Motif architects - they really knew what they were doing..."
Why does it suck so horrendously? All I know is GTK+, which I think is quite spiffy.
Regardless of what you may have read above, I agree with you. Support the Free Software Foundation http://www.gnu.org/
Yo es muy guapo ninja
Several points to this:
1) Considered by whom? Certainly not the LessTif core team and users. I write code to Motif/LessTif all the time.
2) And what's so bad about compatibility anyway? Heaven forbid!
LessTif is alive and well. Many of the "hundreds of applications" available for GTK, are new reinvent-the-wheel applications for which Motif/LessTif applications have been available for years. GTK/KDE are considered sexy because they're new, so existing applications are ported to the new toolkits for very little gain. But hey, hackers have the right to code whatever they like, even if it seems like a foolish effort to the rest of us.
Jon Christopher
LessTif Releasemeister
- What do you think that QT & GTK are missing to be a true replacement of Motif?
Short answer: a price tag.
Long answer: Corporate America wants somebody to blame when it doesn't work. Linux is only starting to catch on in IT departments because so many companies provide support or endorsement - companies like IBM and Dell. For all of its benefit, Free Software in general lacks the ability to give a non-technical manager that warm fuzzy feeling that buying from, e.g., IBM can give. There's a reason why IBM's FUD tactics worked so well, and it's precisely the same reason that GTK won't catch on until it gains some serious corporate backing.
Oh! And having used Motif. I'd really like it to go away. My personal choice would be Qt (as long as it ran on everything under the sun (and them too)).
Last time I used Motif (about 2 years ago, on Irix) was that it had a working and fairly powerful drag and drop. Granted, they changed the API right in the middle of things, which sucked, but I could (and did) write an application where any user could drag "film rolls" (an object in our system) onto the desktop, and then drag them from the desktop into other programs that knew something about "film rolls" and that program could process the film roll. Programs that didn't know anything about film roll object just got the file name where the film roll was stored, but applications that knew about film rolls got all sorts of other characteristics of the film roll in the drop message without opening the file.
I haven't figured out how to do similar dragging and dropping on the desktop or between applications with KDE or Gnome. I'm pretty sure it's there, but it doesn't seem as integrated as it did on Irix.
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I've been doing a little bit of motif programming (on Solaris) and was thinking about starting a moderate sized project using it (and lesstif on Linux).
Is the porting relatively easy, or should I think of writing for GTK initially? Since I won't have a Linux box for a couple of months, I'd have to install GTK on my Solaris box.
What it needs is...a PANCAKE.
This comment is brought to you by a flock of pancakes.
how do I become a 1337 NiNjA??
ninjas are way cool
a jihad upon you and your sister.
I've interviewed with several companies, wokring with FreeBSD Solaris and AIX lately. They noted and immediately recognized linux and that had them interested. However, when they saw GTK+, they asked if it was some specific version of Tk or something. These are relatively knowledgeable people, and among the people I work with few even know what GTK+ is, they just do Java and Motif and Win32 and a little Tcl/Tk, but never hear of Qt and GTK+. I find it a shame in any case.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
GTK is more Open Source? Both are certified as Open Source, both are DFSG compliant. You may call GTK more free, but thats because RMS wants you to call Open Source Free Software and GTK uses the GNU Library GPL.
Both Qt and GTK have bindings - Qt is C++, C (if anyone cares - noone used it with C), Python, Perl, and Qt based apps can be scripted from any DCOP supporting language, even I hear, bash.
Qt Free Edition is X11 only - simply since no one has ported it. It is allowed.
Apps using Qt need not use Qt - GPL is fine, as is BSD, Artistic, MIT, etc - any Open Source license. Shareware / Proprietary is possible by purchasing Qt. If any one bothers about GPL + Qt, just ask about all the Motif based GPL applications, and then call them hypocrites when they defend them.
To get Windows portable software, pay or port, unlike GTK where you can only port it.
I think that covers the major errors.
As someone who developed a major hospital information system using Motif/Xt, I hope that piece of garbage goes to the fiery depths of hell it deserves.
But let me not pull punches, and tell you what I really think. The problem isn't really with Motif, it's with Xt, which is a slow, buggy, slow, hard to understand, slow, inflexible, slow piece of poop. I am totally convinced that it's Xt that has held back applications from being ported to Unix. I think Motif wanted to be a better package, but it was held back by having to work within the straight-jacket of Xt.
On the other hand, X11 (the low-level protocol) is actually pretty good. If we could get some decent font handling, it could be very good. The only problem with X11 is that you really have to understand how it works in order to be efficient over the network connection, but on balance, it's a very well-designed protocol.
One last dig at Xt: DIE DIE DIE
--
I did a jihad on my sister and her best friend last night. They were tight when we started. But after a few hours they were loose like a muslim's donkey.
oink
There are a few features missing in GTK which I find really annoying, being used to X applications which actually use the X Resource Mechanism.
.Xdefaults like any X application should. Try setting a default geometry from .Xdefaults.
.Xdefaults and the X resources mechanism. I thought we liked standards around here? Yes, I know it's somehow possible through GTK's own customization files to accomplish these tasks, but why not use the existing standard mechanisms to accomplish the same task?
1) GTK apps don't parse Xt command line arguments. so you can't do something like "gtkapp -geometry +400+20", or even worse, you can't do "gtkapp -display remotehost". How annoying!
2) GTK doesn't support the editres protocol for querying and customizing widgets.
3) GTK doesn't accept X resources from
GTK suffers a bit from not-invented-here syndrome, and ignores existing standards like
Finally, what's the status of i18n for GTK? Does it exist?
Jon Christopher
LessTif Releasemeister
Thanks. You've learned something new today.
--== www.fltk.org ==--
No bloat, no silly c cast checking. Portable to win32 and X11. No 1/2-assed license, uses LGPL. Cool object oriented design. Give it a try...
Is there a /. ATP (Acronym Translation Page) that I can reference for articles like these?
-----
No Zen is good zen
The article doesn't say it is replacing exisiting Motif applications at the moment, but that there is no NEW applications being written. This isn't to say if a company is already entrenched in Motif or CDE they won't add another program that fits into their world. But probably that program either isn't a commercial product or is only a piece of a larger system that already exists.
Just like FORTRAN programs and mainframes still exist so will Motif and CDE for quite some time. But are any new commercial products being developed using FORTRAN or on a mainframe? I can't think of any. C and workstations have replaced them respectively.
--
?
These are just some examples, and only for Gtk+/GNOME. Qt/KDE has it's own set of features, and obsoletes Motif in several unique ways.
What I'd really like to see is a GNOME/KDE abstraction library that makes it easy for apps like Word Perfect or EMACS to be re-written to use either at compile-time.
Motif may be a pain to work with, but it has one outstanding quality which Qt and GTK both lack: exhaustive O'Reilly references. Give me something comparable to volumes 6A and 6B, and libraries that don't have major changes every time I upgrade my system, and I'll consider switching.
But in the meanwhile I'll stay with Motif. It has a steep learning curve, and it forces me to do a lot of stuff myself (or use third-party widgets), but at least I have good documentation targeted at me as a developer. I also have the QT book, but it's probably less than 1/4 the material of the Motif books - *and* it wastes a lot of time telling me why I want a widget, not how to use it.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I am Sumo. Your buttocks are puny.
The OpenDK development team supports the efforts of the Ninja and we serve nothing but pancakes in our dk() cafe. We support the struggle of the Ninja, the most misunderstood of all assasins, and invite all Ninja to our promotional breakfast at CNN Entertainment to consort with Natalie Portman, petrified before your eyes. Hot grits will be available.
Thank you.
From the article:
Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but I've always had a problem with some of the ethics of an organization which not only defines a standard, but also sells pieces of the only implementation of the standard.
So I guess he's steering clear of Rational, UML, and most of The Object Management Group.
-- In the future, everyone will code Perl for 15 minutes. --
Dude, I think you've got a buffer overflow error in your arithmatic unit. Repeat after me: "28 is more than 1." Thanks.
For those who don't know, LessTif is a LGPL'd replacement for Motif. It provides a nearly complete clean-room reimplementation of the Motif 1.2 API, and is source code-compatible with it. Most apps written for Motif run out-of-the box on when compiled with LessTif, and we want to know about those which don't.
Also, even though binary compatibility isn't a main goal of the LessTif project, some apps (including Netscape 4.5+) which are dynamically linked with OSF/Motif will also run when linked against LessTif. Getting this far is a tremendous accomplishment of the LessTif programming team (I'm on the core team, but I don't do much of the programming, as I mostly coordinate the releases.)
Jon Christopher
LessTif Releasemeister
Yo soy un muy guapo ninja.
Our reasons for switching away from Motif and other closed-source, proprietary libraries and development tools include:
The list goes on and on, but you get the idea.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Quick...somebody make a QT or GTK Java PLAF.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
AFAIK, CDE is just the "icing" to the X-Windows GUI one uses. From the looks of things in my corner of the world, KDE and Qt seem to be running with the idea of professionalism and commercialism - they are gearing towards office application. GTK and Gnome seem to be following the open-source movement (and "hackers" environment) and seems to be slightly favored there.
I for one am new to Linux, have seen a few HP-UX environments which use CDE, and like the looks of CDE. There is a viable "Look-alike" solution, which (again, afaik) is much easier from the user's standpoint to configure. That is the XFce Desktop Environment - take a look at www.xfce.org
Which one is better? Isn't that like asking which linux distribution is better? Both fill a niche; why worry about who is better?
"I only showed you the door...you're the one that tripped and fell through the plate glass..."
there are doorways I haven't opened, and windows I've yet to look through. Going forward may not be the answer..
Ninjas are even cooler when they pour hot grits down their pants.
Unix is dead?! Windows is dead?! Motif is dead?! CDE is dead?! X is dead?!
I don't think so. They are standards and almost solid code. They won't go way for a least the next 25 years. Maybe when developments in nanotechnology or
brain-input-devices show up we will start moving towards different user interfaces. But even them it will take some time for these new technologies to become standards. At today's rate that can take another 20 years.
But isn't yo soy redundant? Shouldn't it just by soy un muy guapo ninja?
...Read my new book, "Spanish for Pancakes", written by Ninjas, for Pancakes. Es muy bueno!
There are many fair criticisms that can be made of Motif (and I've made all of them,) I programmed Motif for years, and I've got more reason to hate it than most people.
But I've never, ever understood the ``Motif is ugly and GTK is beautiful'' argument, because they look the same to me. Seriously! Can someone explain to me why one of these is ugly and the other is beautiful:
Exhibit B
Because I just don't see it. Except for the default font sizes, those look damned near identical to me.
I'd also be interested to hear in what way Motif is ``archaic'' while GTK is not.
And thirdly, I've found writing in GTK to be almost as much as a head-bashing experience as programming in Motif. The APIs are just as crazy, they're just different. One thing that GTK has going for it is that it's slightly less buggy. But it's also a hell of a lot slower.
I tried to moderate this one up, but it went in as a negative. Now the system won't let me re-moderate a message I've already ruled on.
Really sorry, Bad Dog.
Would someone please remoderate him back up again?
Let's see, are Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, and so on shipping with GTK, QT, etc? How about the existing X11 app vendors ... are they converting?
That's not a point in technical favor of Motif, may it die ASAP and rot away quickly. It's the point that CDE (gag) and Motif (where's that bucket?) got strongarmed into a position of commercial prominance (remember "Oppose Sun Forever") as a political manoeuver. As a pure power play, it worked -- OpenLook never caught on in a big way. Technically, Motif still sucks as much as it ever did.
We just wish CDE and Motif would die quickly.
Poll: Would you rather see libXt or Jar-Jar Binks die a grisly death? ;-)
oh... that was beautiful, man
I've specified that GTK be used in my department for UNIX GUI work since it's completely open (No nasty QPL's to worry about) and I like several of its design points. We are trying to avoid gnome dependencies (I don't really want to lock my users into a single desktop environment) despite the fact that I think it'd be fun to toss CORBA objects out there for the stuff we're doing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I didn't think ninjas wore pants, and AFAIK, there are no grits in Japan.
(I don't think there are Pancakes in Japan either, but then again, the U.S. Government denies the existance of Pancakes. Ninjas deny the existance of themselves. Pancakes are yummy.)
Why do they keep moderating it down? CNN Entertainment
Thank you.
I have no sympathy for Motif, but I do like the X Toolkit Intrinsics very much. The Xt Intrinsics are, IMHO, a very elegant, flexible and extensible meta-widget system. Unfortunately, apart from the (small is beautiful) Athena Widget set, the Xt Intrinsics have no satisfactory widget set. Already Motif does not follow many Xt conventions.
Now why did GTK have to go around and reinvent the wheel? Couldn't they have used Xt? All right, Xt doesn't exist for Windows, but wouldn't it have been possible to use it when it does, or implement some kind of Xt replacement for Windows, or some such thing? All right, maybe they had their reasons, but is there some end to this idea that the wheel must be reinvented every damn time you want to build a cart?
The practical consequence of GTK not using Xt is that you can't configure your GTK apps with X resources. What the fsck? X resources are a nice, standard, elegant and pleasant way of configuring programs that use the X Window System. Is there any valid reason why GTK should choose to break this? Why is it that adding gimp*font: fixed to my X resource database doens't work as I expect it? Oh yeah, there's supposed to be a .gtkrc file or some such thing. Where's the doc for this thing, again? Uh...
All right, I don't know very much about the configurability of this GTK thingy (partly because I couldn't find the doc for it). Maybe it has the same nice features and the same power as X resources. And probably I'm bitter because I spent so long learning about the difference between XTerm.VT100.translations and xterm.?*Translations, or that sort of hair-splitting. And because I paid a fortune for those now worthless ``Definititive Guides to the X Window System'' by O'Reilly. So, maybe I am bitter. But breaking everything and making me relearn what I had thought learned for good, is unfair too.
Naturally, in an Ideal World, a given program would not depend on a particular toolkit. Rather, it would simply provide a set of first-class methods that you would attach to whatever you wanted. But then, in an Ideal World, there would be no difference between a ``program'' and a ``function'', either... Oh, never mind, I'm just ranting.
Last time I tried GTK (that was, admittedly, quite some time ago), it wasn't fully thread-safe, so I dropped it (Xt and Athena Widgets, at the time, were completely reentrant). Has this changed since?
Anybody want to help set up the petition?
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As a long time reader (lurker) of Slashdot, I have to conclude that the past couple months have shown that self moderation is not working as planned. Specifically, the amount of raw noise on Slashdot has overwhelmed the ability for readers to filter it out of existence. My conclusion is that moderation is effective with prioritizing topic messages. But it is ineffective in dealing with off topic posts. Therefore, I suggest that Slashdot enact some form of (manual) censorship on posted messages in addition to today's moderation. We could remove half of the messages on this story and it would come close to like the 'old' Slashdot. Just one AC's opinion.
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2B1ASK1
I don't get it. Where are the pancakes at?
As for "the QT book" that you refer to, it was intended for tutorial purposes, not as a comprehensive reference work. See the Troll Tech documentation for the comprehensive documentation.
There hasn't really been a big problem with QT changing every time you update your system either. Unlike GTK+.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Yo soy un ninja muy guapo. Deseo petrificar Natalie Portman. Tengo grits my calliente in mi pantalones. Ay Carumba!
But given the direction that everyone seems to want to take Unix (Linux in particular), GTK is just a bad choice. Too frequent updates (the average user is NOT going to be able to install their own libraries - let alone multiple ones), and when they try to install a shiny new rpm with some nice software that was compiled with GTK 1.2.6, and they have 1.2.1, it won't happen.
tasty when eaten with, ninjas, pancakes & grits.
From a purely aestethic point of view, GNOME applications look far nicer than KDE apps, and infinitely nicer than Motif apps.
More bloat, more bugs, and completely incompatible behavior across even minor revisions. Then they'll be a true replacement for Motif.
Motif is still the standard for commerical desktop Unix apps.
I can hear the response: "But all the commercial desktop apps that people actually use run on Windows." When it comes to Office Productivity apps, that's more or less true.
But when you're talking about commerical engineering apps, things like EDA and FEA, Unix workstations are still a pretty popular platform. Most of those apps use Motif.
This is completely wrong! I'm sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about.
Xt is rock solid, and highly consistent internally. Xt is basically just an object system and an event loop, all the policy and mechanism (implementation of dialogs and menubars, etc) is in the libraries built on Xt (Motif and Athena.)
Motif is bug-ridden, poorly architected, and breaks the object abstraction model left and right.
Athena is consistent and doesn't break the object model, but it also doesn't do much, and looks terrible (Athena doesn't even have proper menubars.)
The biggest mistake GTK made was not using Xt. Xt is just fine, and if they had built on Xt, then it would be possible to mix-and-match GTK, Athena, and Motif widgets in the same program, instead of having to rewrite the whole world.
Also Xrm (the X Resource Manager) would have worked.
The GTK folks were crazy to not build on Xt.
The worst part about the diamond and rectangular buttons is that it is hard to tell whether they are pressed or not. I much prefer the checkmarks of windows to the "depressed" diamond button.
In addition, long pull-down menus are handled very poorly in Motif. Just look through a long Bookmarks menu in Netscape on Linux for an example.
I agree that Motif is butt-ugly. But it didn't take QT or GTK to come up with a nice looking widget set. OpenLook, is, in my opinion, a very nice interface. And it's old. How old? I dunno, but it's gotta be older that QT and GTK, and in my opinion, it's simplicity makes it look a lot better.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
Currently if you want to use Java on Unix/Linux, you either have to have Motif installed, or you have to have a Java runtime that's statically linked against Motif. Somehow, I don't think it's a coincidence that Sun hasn't released a version of Java that uses QT or GTK ... since it makes it that much less likely that those Java applications will be running on a competing OS.
When Scott McNealy announces that Java will use GTK or QT, then I'll know that Motif is dead ... and Solaris too!
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
The solution is here OpenDK plugin is the solution.
Thank you.
Commercial QT does have a price tag. ;-)
all caps is so rude
As for the "appearance" issue, you've picked one of the appearances that I like least. I have no problem agreeing that the "default" GTK look is pretty klunky. (And I'm not hot on the WM theme that you're using either.)
But redo that with the GTKstep theme and get something looking more like this fileselector or this scrolled window.
Other looks may be found at gtk.themes.org.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Though I've never run motif on my own comp, so I can't really judge, motif felt a lot faster to me than gtk and qt.
Dude, I'm inclined to believe that all those years of your life devoted to glue sniffing were, in hindsite, a bad idea, as you obviously don't understand concepts like "numbers."
I use the WM based in Lesstif that comes with RH5.2. It's simple, it's solid and it works. I bet it's even better now. For a Unix die-hard like me it's just great. I think the Lesstif people are doing a great job, unfortunately this is not fully recognized by the GNU/Linux community. Kudos to the Hungry Programmers for the great work!
While I won't address the fact that some of the issues you raise are valid, at least to a point. Usinf --display isn't really that hard to figure out, and less broken wrt to POSIX.
I recommend you use GTK directly, and GLADE to help layout the gui. www.gtk.org is a good place to start.
I've had a few CDE discussions in past months and am actually amazed to see how anxious some folks are to bury it. I use CDE at least 4 times a week (whenever I'm developing on my linux system (XiG's Maximum CDE) or my Ultra30 (Solaris 7). CDE offers a nice launch bar, decent multiple desktops, and a nice set of applications. Everything matches and looks professional, it's not funky and it doesn't look like MacOS or Windows. The Motif widget set also has a very professional, yet simple, clean look to it.
Not everyone needs or wants the ultimate in clashing, flashy, upgradable desktop environments, some of us want a well-supported, commercial product that does its job.
Get a life, people.
A physics tech: "We don't know what language we'll be using fifty years from now, but we know it'll be called FORTRAN."
Kind Regards,
Kind Regards,
Bruce
The question is: do you want to stick to these interaction techniques? Do you want another "desktop" (CDE, MS-Windows or KDE)?
I want more than buttons. More than one mouse. More than "windows" and "desktops".
I think something like Quartz is more interesting, although underused in MacOS X, at least from what I saw in the videos available. This could lead to new interfaces, new interactions (far beyond the "themes" everybody wants and nobody uses...).
First, Motif is =HORRIBLE= to use, with C++.
I completely disagree. With the appropriate wrappers, Motif is a breeze in C++. I haven't seen Motif++, having used home-grown wrappers, but the coding I did in Motif was some of the easiest UI stuff I've ever done. I've been doing MFC code lately, and many times I groan at some of the crap I have to pull to get the UI to look or behave the way I want. I never had such hassles using my wrappers.
Fourth, Gtk and KDE support inter-application communication, in a way Motif did not.
I had no trouble doing all kinds of neat drag-n-drop stuff between multiple applications in Motif. Is there another example of inter-application communication (UI stuff, I don't mean pipes, messages, or sockets) that you are referring to?
Using a beta copy of GPT, the GNU Petrification Tool, I accidently petrified a pancake, and when I tried eating it, I cracked a tooth. So be careful or you may accidently pour hot petrified grits down your pants.
Thanks. ManTroll.
Wrong
Mozilla is currently using GTK. Netscape has used Motif for every unix version around. Whether or not Netscape finally re-builds a Motif front end for their Solaris port (if they do one) remains to be seen.
I personally find the "buttons" (in the current Mozilla milestons) to be attrocious. If you're going to use a GTK app in a GTK environment, then likely you want the theme stuff to work as well. Its a pain in the butt as it is to keep changing xmms skins everytime i change my GTK and WindowMaker themes (which i have to do separately); to have Mozilla butt ugly no matter what i use is just too much, and if it goes "skins" instead of GTK themes for its main controls might lead me to just not bother...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I think everyone can agree on these things:
1.) GTK (w/o pixmapped themes) is fast.
2.) Pixmapped themes look cool, are relatively easy to write, but make GTK slow for the Athlon-deprived.
3.) Theme engines can make GTK really cool (such as the NextStep and Metal engines, but are take time to create.
Personally I didn't take to many of the GTK themes so I created one of my own called "Basic" (yes I couldn't think of a good name), its really simple but doesn't look like Motif and is fast. It doesn't use the pixmapped theme engine, instead it used the standard and metal engines. It took an hour to write. I'm not advertising anything here, I'm sure I'm the only person on the planet that thinks my theme looks good, so don't bother trying it... you'll hate it.
Once again:
GTK && PixmappedThemes == Slow
GTK && ! PixmappedThemes != Slow
I'm doing quite a lot of MMI stuff at work with Motif and some in-house stuff. To build the interface, we use X-Designer. I would really like to use QT, but a lot of our stuff is tied up to Motif and X-designer. We have custom widgets based on Motif widgets and stuff like that. Some of the stuff is a part of a realtime system (weapon control). Changing to abother, possible more unstable, system, would be very expensive. (I'm not sure how stable QT/GTK are compared to Motif). However, a X-Designer->QT converter or X-Designer with QT-capability would have been nice.
Motif got a long a very good history, but it's time to change ;)
....
Motif are not as beautiful as others GUI Library like QT and GTK....
And, I don't have in mind to see in the futur new IDE apps for the Motif library while many devel apps for QT/KDE, GTK/GNOME appear and update every day...
like Kdevelop, QTarchitect, glade, Epingle and many more...
second, I NEVER heard some good comments about CDE !
Everyone know CDE is not as cool as Enlightenment, WindowMaker, AS, KDE, or any else...
..... but
thats just what I think !
bye
Okay, having a launch bar/dock/wharf is nice. Is there a way to ask CDE to hide the launch bar until I want it? My screen real estate is valuable.
Wow, GTK is far better than Qt since it is free as in $$FREE$$.
Please people, stop being so damn cheap, go out and get a freakin job, and pay money where money is due. I think that Qt is a wonderful development package and the developers at Troll Tech deserve to get paid for that.
Need I remind all you ignorant $FREE$ Software Foundation sheep that we live in a capitalist economic system????
QT and GTK both lack good software for GUI building and prototyping. When you're trying out different looks for an application, it's REALLY annoying to have write code to have to specify the look'n'feel of an app when it makes much more sense to use your visual intuition to 'draw' the interface.
I'd go ahead and write one, but I don't want to.
-NooM
HeUnique asks:
What do you think QT & GTK are missing to be a true replacement for Motif?
When you phrase the question that way, the answer is simple, inclusion in an updated OpenGroup Unix Workstation Standard. In order for either to be a replacement for Motif, they'd have to be included standard as part of all the commercial Unixes workstations, which will only happen if they're part of the standard for the Unix Workstation trademark. Motif may be comatose, but it's not dead as long as it's specified.
In other words, the decision will not be made on code quality, license terms, or feature set; both GTK+ and Qt have beat Motif soundly on all three counts. As long as there are commercial Unixes seeking the Unix trademark, the decision will be made on politics within the Open Group, nothing more, nothing less.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Sun need to ship a decent browser, and if they have to ship GTK/QT to accomplish that (even if it's statically linked) then they'll do so.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Standards need to be developed across desktops but Linux and UNIX are operating systems of choice and I don't think any of them should die. 1. Cut and Paste should be extended across all of them to handle objects and stuff...hopefully better than OLE. 2. A desktop's API should have some standard developed for basic things...just like POSIX covers as much as possible across UNIXes. I think that any compatibility sacrifices with old software to produce such standards in the future would even be worthwhile sacrifices. The point is that we MUST GET STANDARDS NOW! Even a semi-bad standard is better than none. email: matthew@tedder.com --Matthew
Basically, GTK was created for the sole purpose of using the Gimp. I could be wrong, but when I first used it I don't even recall a gtkrc. I don't want to piss anyone off, but I think the only reason it has become so popular is because of the shitty license Qt had at the time (yeah not everyone likes the QPL now, but it is a lot better than it was). The gripes you have about GTK, which I think are valid, were not nearly as important as having a true OSS answer for Qt.
There is a lot more to a 'real' application that text entry boxes and menu bars.
There are hundreds of commercial and freeware widgets available for Xt/Motif that just don't exist for Qt or GTK. Everything from 3-D data visualization controls to phase of the moon widgets. These are the kind of widgets that take multiple man-years to develop and debug, and commercial software developers rely on.
Until many more of these are available, Motif will continue to be the only viable choice.
Short story:
Lesstif was the wrong name.
FreeXm, FreeMtif, FreeXtif FreeLibXm are all better.
Long story:
I think there is one thing that people often forget when selling a product free or not.
A catchy name, self explanatory name, or one that mimics a current popular product is more likely to get popular than one that that is hard to say, tries to be cute or inflamatory.
But often, the ones in charge don't realize this, or just refuse to give up a name that they invented. "The name is the least of are worries"
Or maybe they just want to make sure any commercial software types are turned off.
Bad names, and what they say to me:
Lesstif: Opposite of a bad misinterpretation of Motif. Less (useful|costly|important) than Motif.
POOP: Proprietary Orbix Only Protocol. I guess IONA engineers really wanted people to use IIOP.
GIMP: Bad slang - Crippled software.
HURD - It's so much better than everthing else, that hurds of them will come. Rymes with...
Good names:
XFree86(Though the new XFree name is better fitting)
Linux - Giving credit to the man that demands little. Reminds us of Unix.
J++: Crappy product, but it's an obvious name that doesn't violate Sun's rules.
Disclaimer: I'm not a GUI programmer. Regardless of the toolkit, it always seemed to be a massive hack. That said, please post the code to create both windows, and see which looks more maintainable and flexible. I'm betting the Motif one will require a bit more hacking to get quite right, and probably won't scale to large projects as easily. Does the full rewrite of Netscape ring any bells?
If you think about it, there's no reason a theme based on the Pixmap engine should be any slower than anything else -- it's doing all the same things, rendering buttons and toolbars and whatnot.
:)
It turns out that the Pixmap code was pretty braindamaged -- it was based on Imlib (which is not known for beauty or speed of code), and it did some dumb things. Somehow, for example, it ended up rendering everything three times.
It's being rewritten based on GDXPixbuf, the new GNOME imaging library. It will be fast, light, and much more capable. All your Pixmap themes should become suddenly very happy
One thing that is different is that Gtk is themeable. Back then, I liked to use Open Look. The reason is that
a) I like the functionality (left mouse selects default menu alternative when clicking on a menu, right mouse really opens it), and
b) I like the rounded bevels around selected menu items. I think Motif (And Qt) looks pretty bad, while being such "edged", and
c) The borders of Motif are by default set to 2pixels. I personally think that is an over usage of graphical space. I want 1pixel lines everywhere.
All of these, except for the first are solvable using Gtk themes. And the first one should be solvable using the loadable module feature of Gtk.
You might have selected a more diff erent theme (Not to say you where wrong selecting that theme, it proved your point).
I have never programmed Motif, so I have nothing to say about it. But I have programmed under Gtk (And even on Gtk, that is patched the libs to add some functionality (Altough, my patches never made it into the CVS)).
The Gtk API is not that flawed. From my point of view, it really have only one drawback - one that results from it being implemented in a non-oo-language - it does not have multiple inheritance, which have resulted in some partly hackish solutions (It is even mentioned in the code comments).
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Enh...
I'd have to say that GNUstep-gui does, seeing as that WINGS was essentially created as a simplified version of that library. I do, however, agree that it is a _very_ nice look.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Then they had color --- wheeee. (1987 ish).
Then around 1991, we were all moving to OpenWindows because that was the REALLY great thing to use and Sunwin was no longer supported by Sun, really. So, re-port all the code we wrote for Sunwin to Openwin. Sigh - OK but it's just this one time.
1993-or-so. Oops. OpenWindows is passe. Other groups jump to X11, but my IS department doesn't want to support that because Sun has a *vision* but still keeps everyone in the dark that Motif is where Sun is headed (supposedly).
1994/1995 - Did I say Motif? I meant NeXT, or something else. The X11 people are putting their fingers in their ears to drown out the complaints of all the people who heard through the grapevine to dump OpenWindows and embrace Motif (so they started porting things to Motif), but at least they've been able to use the same GUI for a few years. All the people in the dark are still using OpenWindows, and have no idea that everyone else is using something different.
1997 - Some people have CDE now. The X11 people are still using X11 and everyone else who still hasn't figured out how to configure OpenWindows are still using OpenWindows with the same blue screen. It's an easy discrminator to tell the populations who are aware of the non-Sun UNIX world and those for whom e-mail is still "a nifty new thing that might catch on".
1999 - I'm using CDE at work which is almost impossible to configure (I still haven't been able to get a Netscape button on the tool bar, but I'm the ONLY person around who has an Xterm button where everyone else has a "TextEditor" button a Sun application that is used by zero people except for my officemate).
2000 - Oops CDE is now passe as is Motif. What will Sun support next? (Well, not NeXT! :-) So in 15 years I've changed GUIs for my Sun workstations what 3 almost 4 (I avoided Motif) times.
Meanwhile all the X11 people are using things like Gnome (like I am at home) and we're back to where we started again, except all the clueless people are still on OpenWindows and almost no one uses the facilities that come with it, prefering to do all of that on M$ machines at home or next to their Sun workstation. The IS dept. hasn't said "boo" about where they're headed although most of them are using CDE... Meanwhile, I've just given up doing a lot of things with my Sun workstation and work from home on my Linux box with Gnome+Sawmill, hoping that eventually Gnumeric is less bug-riddled and the next stable version of Gnome won't make StarOffice crash (has anyone else seen this???)
So, as I said at the top. Sigh. What goes around.................
I'm nuts about QT--programming-wise. MFC and OWL are also OO, but QT is the only toolkit I'm aware of that actually fully employs the philosophy. It's vastly abstracted and yet more flexible. I don't need to have it event driven, but I can. I can reduce my programming work becaues it works like the concept of small tools....everything is directly inter-operable. QT truelly is a revolutionariy concept..and it's fast....but I agree that GTK and Motif are both vastly easy to code than MFC or OWL. Plus...QT is portable... I like that, too. GTK is just another Motif almost. QT is fundamentally new. email: matthew@tedder.com --Matthew
Camel? Commitee Designed Horse?
USSR: Commitee Designed Economy?
CDE? What?
The GUI Toolkit, Framework Page at http://www.atai.org/guitool/
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Of course, I'm sure I'll never see that day. :)
There is really no reason why Motif should have to be replaced. Aside from some minor differences, GNOME, KDE and Motif are essentially the same in temrs of interface. (I know GNOME and KDE have frameworks, but thats not my point.) Whatever is standardized next, I just hope it is a scheme that is independant of the widget set. Motif would still be usable now if it weren't so ugly. Make a standard interface, but make the widgets replaceable, so you get the compatibility that comes with standardization, AND get an interface that is visually pleasing to different people.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
This is why commercial Un*x was invented. This is why commercial Un*x OS's, whether they be Ultrix or Irix or Solaris, are still sold at incredibly high rates. There never was a "plan" to replace your average secretary's cpu with a Un*x box running Motif - it's similar to replacing a child's machine with a CRAY.
So there isn't much "new" and "modern" work done on Motif. So what? Motif is a stable platform. It will continue to be used over KDE in it's intended environment - the heavy-duty commercial applications world.
Folks, I'm talking engineering here. I'm talking about the machines which generate special effects for the entertainment biz. I'm talking about the machines run millions of calculations and checks on DNA while trying to crack the genetic code. I'm talking about the machines which monitor the safety conditions in a factory, making sure the bio-hazards remain safe. Do you *really* want these applications to run on top of KDE - a still in development, still unstable, still buggy environment? Would you trust your life on KDE? Or somebody else's?
Most of us love Linux and some of us love KDE. We're willing to forgive it's "growing pains" for the greater good, overlook the occasional crashed kernel and the odd core dump. But what if that machine was mission critical? Would you really suggest Linux and KDE for the job?
I'm all for KDE and I'm all for Linux, but let's call a spade a spade and stop bashing Motif for not being Windows 98. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust my life on Windows 98. And I would trust my life on Motif.
Tepp
Yes, I know this qt app (which i am still trying to compile), which does not work with kde's qt. I can install both libraries, qt-2.0.2 and qt-1.44, and (eventually) both this app and the kde app will work.
The point is, this does exist for both qt and gtk, and it is not a big deal.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
One should note the following before making comments about the Motif/GPL/LGPL situations...
Motif is a system library (as in, it comes with it and you can't not have it!) and is covered under the "native system library" clause of the GPL and LGPL. It's completely legit to have a GPLed application or library and use Motif in those environs.
LessTif works for almost every one of the apps that fall under this situation under Linux.
I'm afraid that there is no equivalent for Qt for any GPL software (it has neither system lib status or clones...) at this point in time.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I think that Motif and CDE are really well on their way to demise, but not because there's something wrong with both tools themselves. Their main weakness is they have only C BINDINGS with no good interface to OO languages. IMHO, we see the beginning of the end of C. In the late 80s- early 90s there were many languages on the market (Ada, Modula-2, Pascal, CLU, etc.) that were much more powerful and flexible than C, had much better support for large projects and provided far greater software reliability and had the potential to become OO (like Ada 9X). It seems to me that main reason for almost universal acceptance of C was plenty of available libraries with programmatic interfaces limited to C header files and difficulties with multi- languages development (especially if the performance- critical parts were to be written in C). It's nice that power of the Header File fades. But, Qt, GTK and other C++ based toolkits aren't a solution either. The user can appreciate the reliability of the Linux system only if he'll see the reliable applications running on a Linux box. Serious (both GPL/Open Source and any other) applications are large. If they will be written the same way as Windass bugware is currently being written, the main advantage of Linux will be overlooked and lost. So, it seems to me, that main point is getting rid of C compatibility (forcing use of C++ for the purposes it has never been designed for) completely. Here, I like the KDE's idea to make UI toolkit API available in the form of CORBA interfaces (the list of solutions is long open). Despite of performance issues, it's much better than replacing a S. O. R. B (Source of Re-usable Bugs) by just S. O. R. B.++. P. S. I'd really be happy to see some UI toolkits die. Ones who play Windass L&F on a Linux system.
as above.
The GTK boys got a boost today, I saw that Applixware have released a pre-release that uses the GTK widgets. Is this the first commercial GTK based application?
The primary things they're missing which would make them like Motif are:
1) Massive memory footprint.
2) Unexplainable interface lockups and "bus errors".
3) High price.
4) Closed source code.
If we can just fix those problems with Qt and GTK, we can be just like Motif!
And then, we can get started on making KDE and GNOME just like CDE. I suggest a global insertion of delay loops into every function as a good start.
As long as I can jerk off on high-resolution Natalie Portman jpegs, every GUI is fine. Take a look at http://www.nportman.com. Lots of pictures to beat your meat on :)
Has anyone else stopped going to themes.org since they switched to that new format a few months back? The preferences don't appear to work, and it's hell to browse themes. Before, I'd download new themes from wm.themes.org every other day; now I can't stand wading through the glitz.
--
#19845
Agreed, gtk's default theme is butt-ugly.
Agreed, pixmap themes are way to slow. I can actually see the menus being drawn. Not acceptable.
BUT, try a engine theme (e.g. thinice) and you get pretty, functional, and fast.
Say you sell a car to a customer. In general, it's a good and quick car, but the proper wheels are not yet included. You have mounted only some spare tires. So the customer can only make 30mph wasting his fuel until purchasing the real wheels from a separate company.
Say you sell a Motif App to a customer. In general, it's a good quick app, but the proper Toolkit is not yet included. There is only a static linked version...
Got it?
Gtk and Qt is like in Win32: The user runs my App _full_taste_.
GTK/QT enable the programmer to create apps that don't look like theyre from the 1970s. While, admittedly, this has little do do with functionality, it is somewhat important that your app looks as attractive on *NIX as it does on MacOS or Windows. GTK
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I spend many of my off-work hours working on free software (freetds.org among others). What do I get in return for this?
I never have to pay for software again. That's the deal as I see it. It's my time writing software in exchange for somebody elses time writing different software.
Of course you can bitch all you want about people who don't contribute but leave me out of your little rant. I simply don't pay for software anymore, but its not because I am cheap, it's because I've already spent my time in much larger quantities to ensure that.
Yes there are products that are still being developed, but see my point in the last post, what is coming out that is new? I'm sure thare are a few things, but how much? Give it up they have been replaced as the choice for new development by workstations. So with your experience if you were given the task of developing a new system with no hardware requirements (the bank/client/whatever doesn't care what it runs on and they don't have any current hardware) are you honestly going to develop on a mainframe? The mainframe developer pool is shrinking, the hardware is hard to find, the clients won't get those pretty pictures they love so much, and you're going to have to support the hardware too because they aren't going to hire a competent mainframe sysadmin if they can even find one.
Sure my bank account probably is on an IBM mainframe, but that machine nor its programs are probably very new. Maybe the software had a new version come out, but that isn't a new product.
I will admit I could be wrong, maybe there is a big underground mainframe movement, so prove me wrong then and tell me about all these newly developed comercial products for mainframes. I only ever hear about people trying to replace them.
--
?
BTW, what's ugly about CDE or Silicon Graphics' Motif? At least, they are much more eye-friendly than Windass (unless you use the Black on Gray scheme, surely). The 3D controls are very distinctive, White on Blue colour schemes pose much less workload on eyes, icons are large also. It's also interesting that most of Windass'9X new L&F was acquired from Motif (3D look of controls) and all new functionality (local menus, D&D, built- in Clipboard support for text fields, propery sheets, list views etc.) was simply stolen from Sun's OpenWindows desktop.
well, let's see... bloatedness, closed source, ugly widgets, ability to crap out and sometimes take your X-server with it..., no new features for several years..
Did I leave anything out?
The feel of GTK can safely be described as butt ugly.
My worst gripes in this regard are the behavior of word wrapping in GTK (I hate being unable to WYSIWYG move the cursor using arrows, instead of jumping up/down by paragraphs), and the behavior of scroll bars (middle click for absolute scroll works but won't drag, scrollbars should go non-proportional when they get as tall as they are wide, not shrink to a sliver, and why the outdated one-arrow-at-each-end assumption?).
Two GUIs only? Come on! There will be more in the future, because the whole story of Open Source is to reinvent the wheel as often as some ego decides it must do it better. Thats why we all celebrate an OpenSource OS thats basically based on 20 years old know how. But it is reinvented, and thats fun. And of course if we have multiple GUIs on UNIXes there will be open source projects that will build several unified GUIs, and then ones that will unify the unified GUIs... Ahhhemm, and forget about silly people like users or strange animals like application developers.
One of the things that I actually liked about Windows was its consistant (crappy or not; let's not argue about that here) interface, its "look and feel". All (err, most) Windows applications, no matter how bad they worked, looked vaguely the same. Everyone (okay, discounting LiteStep stuff) who programs for Windows gets the same API. You get a window that looks standard (okay, maybe kinda dull), a standard menu bar, toolbar, status bar, etc. There are little nice things about it, too, such as a uniform behavior of taskbar buttons (on GNOME you must do show-hide twice to raise an invisible window with the mouse (yes, you can do Alt-Tab, but even that is not as good as Windows's Alt-Tab)) (KDE thankfully does raise by taskbar click). Configuration for how all windows look is done in one place (the Display control panel). Maybe it isn't the individual elements that make the Windows UI nice; it is how it is all integrated. Even with KDE (which I think is nicest as far as "Windows emulation"), plain-old X apps don't, and can't, have the smae look and feel as straight KDE apps. And then there are the different desktop environments (someone suggested that this phrase should be in quotes; maybe that's a good idea) available for Unix (Linux), i.e., CDE(Motif), KDE(Qt), and GNOME(GTK). "So what if it's crap; it's all the same crap." -- Me
Don't go ranting and saying that I support Windows and must be burned :-). I'm just saying that Microsoft actually did get some things right. I could write a very long post on the many ways I hate Windows, but I like its consistent UI. This is one thing Linux (err, Unix) badly needs to have to really catch up and overtake Windows. Now MacOS is a different story, especially with Aqua. Man, why can't they release the source for that thing? I'd port it to Linux! (Shouldn't be that hard considering that the kernel is BSDish and Darwin is supposedly open-source.)
"Whatever,"
Ken
I will eat you, pancake, with one mighty ninja blow.
I have developed with CDE/Motif for a while now and I have to say I find this whole thing very, very sad. CDE/Motif offer the best APIs and the best behaviour of any toolkit and desktop. Unlike these open source toolkits/desktops they don't try to look like Windows or function like Windows. They are designed for corporate networks where it makes sense to be able to easily access applications all over the network (and save bandwidth).
CDE/Motif are not designed for the PC, they are designed for the enterprise, the organisation, and bigger things. They don't put in a bunch of splashy graphics; instead they consist of functionality and power. It's easy to develop excellent applications with the libraries.
Newer versions, by the way, are improved, so if you only have experience with, say, 1.2, don't judge newer versions based on this.
Please don't write off this excellent piece of software and standards. It's got a lot of benefits if only you look into them.
C.D.E. R.I.P.?
(I particularly liked the Xcam ad.)
Does anybody know anyone who's actually using Applixware now? It had its time when there was nothing else for most Unix plattforms, but those days are over. Goodbye Applixware!
According to the Qt website...
http://www.troll.no/pricing.html
$2,390 (one developer, both platforms)
(incl. 1 year Support & Upgrades)
That is quite a bit of cash.
Motif has never really gone anywhere in the GNU/Open source community because of the licensing restrictions, the same type of restrictions that nearly killed Qt and the KDE. I'm surprised nobody mentioned this either.
Now that there are (some would say better) alternatives such as Qt and GTK for the Open Source community I doubt Motif will go anywhere even if it ever does get released w/o licensing restrictions, or that LessTif ever achieves 100% compatibility. However, Motif will continue to live on as the platform for those government and military applications for some time to come.
I am a japanese ninja, and believe me there are pancakes in Japan. I have to defeat and eat several dozens daily. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta be a ninja.
Sun is maintaining it, they have quite some people in Ireland working on it.
No X gui which shuns Xt is an acceptable X gui.
Period. I want my X resources, my command line parsing, and a standard framework of gui mechanisms.
It seems to me that Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis were more interested in writing the whole nine yards, top to bottom, rather than reusing very fine, pre-existing, fully open-source (MIT license, folks) code like Xt. The only living, growing, open-source widget library which started from the right point is Lesstif. There could have, and *should* have been others. Maybe it's still not too late?
I can personally sympathize with the urge to re-invent the wheel. I have the urge myself, sometimes, because I want to dig through the entire problem, at all of it's layers. But it was a mistake for their little school project to be adopted as a standard library for countless apps. We will be paying the price for this stupidity for quite some time.
They should have used Xt, damnit!
-- Mike Greaves
Can someone point the way to a FAQ on how the whole X system fits together?
I understand that KDE and Gnome are Window Managers that sit on top of X, but how do the rest of the widget toolkits, and other X software fit in? i.e. Where does Xt sit ? Xforms?
I've used xforms in the past, but the whole X picture is a bit hazy.
I've heard that X is big and slow. What does X implement? Is it just a networkable GUI system, or does it have more?
Thx.
Cheers
Personnally, I love tk (as in tcl/tk, perl/tk, python/tk, etc).
It's just so easy to use!
Exhibit B looks nicer.
As a graphics programmer, Exhibit A, looks kind of 'dull'. One reason: Its flat shaded.
And the Hilights (the white and black outlines around buttons) are too thick. Exhibit B, (and Win9X/NT) buttons have a "soft round" edge to them.
Cheers
In my point of view Gimp is shit program.
GTK widgets look so ugly i feel sick looking a them. By the same reason I can't stand the looks of any GTK based app or GNOME. It's like a ugly girl - yuck!
Hmmm... I may be totally of my rocker here, but I always thought that X printing issues had more to do with the underlying Unix prining system than anything else; ie: that Unix was the problem, not X.
Anyone care to comment? Am I right or horribly wrong?
Of course, this doesn't excuse X's horrible (lack of) drag-and-drop implementation. But it looks like that is finally coming around (ie: witness the rest of this thread).
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
qlineedit.h
qmultilinedit.h
One has two e's and the other only one????? I'll stick with GTK+ thanks.
Aye to that... For a long time, XView was my favourite GUI toolkit. It's the only one which can be programmed in C without line upon line of function calls and huge structs with pointers to functions. Not to mention that the UI looked much better than anything else on UNIX/X; it looked as if they actually had some professional designers do it.
Btw, has anyone appropriated the OPEN LOOK look and feel for Gtk or Qt?
In the late 1950s, psychologies found that the human brain can only keep about 7 "things" in mind at any one time. This varies depending on various factors, but not by much. It was because of this that telephone numbers, for example, were designed to have seven digits.
The definition of "things", of course, depends on which level you're looking at. If you've got a highly complex system, with dozens of elements, it will be impossible to understand it all at once, unless the elements are subsumed into some sort of hierarchical structure.
Xt and Motif's fatal flaw is that it violates this, failing to provide enough abstraction to allow the programmer to easily get their head around it. As such, Xt/Motif programmers are forced to flip through reference books. (Think of the Xt/Motif API/model as the cognitive equivalent of a horribly bloated program, far too large to fit in memory, and not designed well enough to minimise swapping.)
In my experience with programming GTK and Qt interfaces, I've learned that they are both quite buggy and bloated. Especially GTK. The widgets are quite nice, and the eyecandy is very well-developed, but I can't see how they are going to replace window managers that have found their way into mainstream OS's like Solaris, and clones of these window managers, KDE, Lesstif, and Afterstep, which are found in Linux, LinuxPPC, FreeBSD, etc. Motif and CDE have etched a niche that no matter how buggy or inflated overheaded they have become, they have to have some really top-notch, stable competitors to take them out of the mainstream and deprecate them.
We use it where I work on our Ultra 5's. Everyone likes it. It's stable. However it is a bit slow; takes a while for the corba engine etc. to get going initially.
For some libraries, GPL is fine. But a GUI toolkit is a core piece of functionality for an operating system. I believe it is good to get as many commercial vendors to use a single standard GUI toolkit. And this is really no different from the Linux kernel itself: I can write commercial software running under the Linux kernel without going open source. LGPL best encourages that kind of use.
I think Qt isn't a good choice as a major Linux toolkit: as a GPL'ed system, I think its license is too restrictive to allow universal use, and as a for-pay commercial toolkit, I think it's too expensive compared to commercial alternatives. And the QPL and Troll Tech's statements about it always leave a lingering doubt about licensing issues for both free and commercial software development. Qt is technically not bad, but to me, it isn't so much better than the alternatives to warrant living with that kind of hassle.
Ugliest, buggiest, slowest, damned Motif! Die! Die! Die! Die! I had had to program with motif on the solaris, back in 96 and it was such a pain in the ass. I hated all the lib calls, all the C dependent structures. It had just made my beautiful C++ code look ugly.
--exa--
Posts like yours make little sense to me. Why bother using a free kernel and utilities if you are going to pay $1500 for a developer license for Qt? That's more than you pay for Solaris with Motif, or for Windows NT with development tools.
In a capitalist system, the market forces prices down. It makes a lot more economic sense for companies to donate to GNOME/GTK+ than to pay Troll Tech's prices. And at $1500/developer, it even makes sense to put up with whatever the limitations (if any) of GTK+ might be compared to Qt.
Of course, even looking at it from the point of who did the work, much of the value of Qt wasn't generated by Troll Tech at all. The KDE volunteers contributed bug fixes, code, documentation, and marketing. Without that, Qt would be a footnote in a large field of commercial C++ toolkits.
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
1 is more than 9
From a purely anaestethic point of view, HUMAN turds look far nicer than DOG turds, and infinitely nicer than Horse turds.
I've heard "click and mortar". ughh.
--
Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
****Gfx Scrollbar Special case hit!!*****
well no, in most cases the pixmap theme does not overrender. Its true that GTK cvs has a better redraw system.
And Pixmap themes will be slower than 99% of engine themes, because a pixmap theme has to stretch a pixmap to fit the object, even if the object could be easily drawn with 4 calls to XDrawLine (or the GDK equivalent).
motif and cde kick ass cuz the high end workstations work really well with the official stuff.
bear in mind that the casual programmer/linux enthusiast NEVER sees these type of machines, and I seriously doubt the author of the piece has either.
the cluster of irix/sgi machines i use at work blows away any cluster of commercial pc's i've seen -- and of course they use motif/cde.
it's a really crappy comparison to make. really, the article is more flamebait than anything else, it's doesn't make a lot of sense.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Oh please, Mr. Buttfuck Nobrain, don't hurt me! I know how intolerable life must be for you since you had the lobotomy, so why don't you you jump under a bus and end it all? I would definitely pay at least ten bucks to see that.
I'm amazed that nobody have said it before.
With Gtk+ being the standard UNIX GUI for Netscape Browser, and Netscape browser being the standard UNIX web browser.
Is there any doubt about Gtk being THE standard UNIX GUI?
With Mozilla Gtk+ will be installed in all (and I mean ALL) UNIXes in the world.
No matter how much run TrollTech and Opera; it is a fact, the only problem could be MS porting IE to all UNIXes and then MFC would be THE standard UNIX GUI.
What do you think?
The windowing system part of NeWS didn't survive - Postscript was evil and unsafe and insecure and undebuggable, but what you saw really was what you'd get - stuff looked good on the screen, and great on paper, and it was really the same fonts, not some different font for different printers and different size because it's paper, and the stuff aliased when it should and aligned when it should - Windows still feels like looking at a fax of your real screen image.
But what did survive was Gosling's experience of making processes work together across different pieces of hardware - giving you the flexibility to split work between client and server any way that makes sense, which involves sending code from the client to the server to get it run there. This let NeWS do most mouse handling on the server (that's the machine that draws stuff on the screen near your face, for you non-X folks who think the server is the big box in the back room.) And it lets your web browser run Java programs in cooperation with applications back on a web server somewhere, without needing to install plugins in your browser. Security is one of the obvious lessons from NeWS, which would run any Postscript you handed it, if it didn't crash in the process, and adopting the p-code sandbox approach makes that sort of model possible, if not necessarily blazingly fast. (And lots of tools for making things fast have been added later.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
GRRRR!
I _hate_ when people that didn't bother to actually take Spanish lessons go saying/writing stuff like:
Carumba (CARAMBA)
Desperado (DESESPERADO)
No problemo (NO HAY PROBLEMA)
C++
I rekon those people in Ireland are too busy drinking guiness to develop CDE any further. Plus, Sun don't really understand software. Their software strategy is geared towards value add selling of their hardware. Even with Java, they keep fumbling the pass.
LessTif is an exciting proposition to me, but...
We have some in-house software that we tried to recompile on Debian Linux w/ LessTif and it cores out pretty quickly. We haven't spent the time to track down the problem, but I suspect one problem is that we abuse the Scrollbar widget to be a % complete widget, so we repeatedly set the size of the scrollbar. I think there are other problems, too, but I won't have time to dig into them for another few weeks. I'll try to remember to follow up when I know something actually useful.
As long as I'm spending bandwidth, Here are some complaints about Motif. (GTK should consider not only equalling Motif, but doing better!)
- No % complete widget
- Requesting different bit depths in different widgets is PAINFUL. Requesting 24 bit color for the Canvas should be a resource, not a complicated subroutine
- No scrolling option menu (there are freeware like the ComboBox, but this should be built in, c'mon now, really.
adeu,Mateu
"And we're happy here, but we live in fear, we've seen a lot of temples crumble..." - Concrete Blonde
A JAVA GUI system with the baggage of X and CDE removed would probably be faster and less of a memory hog than CDE.
John
John_Chalisque
Every since I found out how powerful application development using php3 is I have abandoned X programming.
It is so much easier to design a set of good looking web page than it is to design a good looking X windows program. If something is in the wrong place or mislabled in my web page it is easy to find and fix.
With php3 I give the information to a web browser somewhere who can display it, however they want. I get the results back, process them and put them into a database.
I can develop an entire application in the time it used to take to simply design and place my menu bars and widgets.
And debugging why some gui element that wasn't coming up the way I wanted was always a nightmare. I am glad to say goodbye to all X GUI programming.
Well, why in Motif example you did not use the Tab Properties Dialog, as in the GTK+ example? :-) ).
As far as I know (and I do program in Motif), it's because is not a standard Motif widget (yes, you you can buy extra libraries, which maybe are not compatible/supported with your GUI builder tool).
And what about tree widgets to show hierarchies? Toolbars? A file dialog box in which you can
create a new directory on the fly? Text widget with GNU 'line edit' capabilities? ( well, maybe GTK+ has not this either, but it would be a nice idea
GTK+ may have some way to go, but IMHO it IS the future of MMI development( or part of it ).
Ciao
----
FB
You said: All the best languages are niche languages.
What like COBOL? Seriously, there are way to many variables that go into making a good language, deciding what the best tool for the job is, and what a person's favorite language is to argue about those. But I will argue that for most jobs the non-niche languages are the best fit. That is why they are not niche languages, they solve a wide variety of problems and do a good job at them.
Your idea of what "all the best languages" are may be completely different from somebody else's idea of "all the best languages". "Best" is largely subjective.
--
?
...is looks like frozen shit.
What I mean is that it looks uncannily like Windows 3.0
And no, it's not the acid.....
Well said.
...
There's also this remarkable thing about open source libraries -- I can distribute them with my product! Add to that this remarkable technology called "shell scripting" and I can have a software bundle that will install and run coherently with no real dependencies on Sun (especially if I staticly link in the clib calls, as Sun does like to introduce irritating incompatabilities between hardware updates of the same version of Solaris).
But we have gone a step further
There's also this remarkable platform called Linux, which works wonderfully well and costs a minute fraction of what a Sun box does, for the same or even better performance, depending on the application and hardware platform.
Another remarkable product called FreeBSD works wonders as well. I'd be hard pressed to pick one over the other, and would pick both, hands down, over the proprietary alternatives.
It is cheaper to provide a complete hardware solution than to jump through Sun's hoops. And since it is in-house trading software, our only customers are the traders, who make us all millions trading on this system. Our developers are happy, our "customers" are happy, and I as a system/network administrator am happy.
Yeah, I guess my life is "dreamy" now. It's also extremely productive and well paid, allowing me to indulge in hobbies (like flying airplanes) I never would have dreamed of a few years ago, and providing the robustness and stability to give me the time to do so.
This is the kind of rewards one gets when one goes out on a limb a little and empowers oneself (and one's employer) by taking control of one's infrastructure and technology back from one's vendors.
Microsoft is an atrocity (technically and ethically) and we no longer jump through their hoops, let alone run their software
Sun is a Microsoft wannabe, and we no longer jump through their hoops either. We use their hardware platform only in as far as it pleases us, and routinely dump it for more cost effective alternatives (Dec Alpha running Linux, Power PC, Intel, depending on the application and its requirements). And no Sun box, not even their 64 processor monster, holds a candle to a well contstructed Linux Beowolf cluster. Sun's habit of keeping open source software (Linux in particular) at arms length has caused us to dump many of their software products, such as StarOffice (Applix is better and not being allowed to rot over time) and Java, which would have otherwise remained useful and continued to be used by us. Unfortunately for Sun, they have persued an idiotic strategy with respect to Open Source software, a strategy designed to benefit Sun at their customers' (i.e. our) expense. Of course we did someting about that, by dumping the aforementioned products, with prejudice.
The same goes for the so-called Open Software Foundation (which is hardly open) and MOTIF, which we had dumped long before dumping most of Sun itself.
The net result? More productivity, vastly more uptime and reliability, more wealth, and more time to spend it doing fun stuff.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy