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GUI Builders For Solaris?

Posted by Cliff on from the dialog-construction-kits dept.

Penguin_99 asks: "I was asked to create two GUI's, in Solaris, in order to compare the speed of a C++ GUI versus a Java GUI. Right now, the GUI builder of choice is Teleuse (which is made by Telesoft), however this tool is hard to use and there is little documentation for it (not to mention the company no longer supports it). I would like to know if anyone in the Slashdot community has experience with Teleuse and knows of any on-line documentation or do you know of a better GUI builder that works with Solaris?"

6 of 15 comments (clear)

  1. OK, this seems kind of weird... by randombit · · Score: 3

    How exactly do you measure the 'speed' of a GUI? Generally speaking, a GUI is going to be limited in speed by how fast it gets user input, not by processing time - and if not nobody will want to use that interface. I know that C/C++ GUIs aren't like that (or I'd be using lynx right now...) and hopefully neither are Java GUIs?!?!?!? It just seems like a very strange thing to try to compare.

    That said, most common GUI libraries (GTK+, QT, and, of course, Motif) run on Solaris, since they use Xlib (GTK+) or Xt (QT?), which are available everywhere. Motif seems the obvious choice since that's the one that's 'native', so to speak, on Solaris. And there are many different Motif builders for Unix, and as I've never touched any of them, I'll leave other /.ers to recommend something specific in this area.

    However, you said C++: if you really want C++ and not C, you have several options, including GTK--, QT (which you will need to pay for depending on what you're doing), FOX (a multi platform GUI library that I've looked at but never had time to use), and there are probably several others. But OTOH if you're using a GUI builder it probably doesn't matter too much what language it's in.

    Without knowing more about your problem, I'd recommend you use either Motif and one of the many interface builders, or GTK+ and Glade.

  2. Sun Workshop by bueller · · Score: 3
    As part of Sun's Visual Workshop product line, recently renamed Forte [Insert Language Here], there is their C++ development environment consisting of compilers, debuggers, profilers, version control, and a GUI builder. Even better, the GUI builder will output Java or C++ code. The compilers are optimised for SPARC and the results are worthwhile (Sun have to do something to justify the expense).

    Better yet, to help with your eval you can do a 'try and buy', but you better have a good net connection because the download is huge.

    It is actively supported by Sun, although updates come in fits and starts - over 2 years between version 3 and version 5 (no version 4), and a year later version 6.

    I'd be interested to know how you go. The Java GUI should run slightly slower.

  3. What toolkit? Seen KDevelop? by hatless · · Score: 3
    As noted above, there are a few for Motif, if Motif's what you want to use, and it's more or less the Solaris default, given their use of the CDE.

    Some offbeat alternatives that go beyond or sidestep the sort of standalone GUI-builder you sound like you're looking for would be:
    • A Tk frontend, built with the free Visual Tcl (not to be confused with the other 3 or 4 products called Visual Tcl)
    • GTK+. If you're prepared to require GTK+ on the deployment systems, or build static binaries, there's a fine standalone GUI builder out there, but I forget what it's called. It generates C. Then there's VDKBuilder, which is an entire C++ IDE that includes a GUI builder.
    • KDE. For KDE, there are a few full-featured IDEs, the best of which right now is KDevelop. If you can get QT on deployment machines or want KDE on deployment systems (it's a damn fine desktop, and is available as Solaris .pkgs), you can do some *really* slick, fully GNU tools-ified work with KDevelop, and it will let you do "ordinary" QT development if you don't want to build KDE apps. It'll happily package up your source tree with autoconf support, SGML, HTML and man page documentation while you're at it. Since you're looking into commercial GUI builders, I assume you don't have a problem with the license fee for doing commercial QT development.
  4. YACL by nonlinear · · Score: 2
    All the previous ideas have been very good. I've been looking for something similar. I've also come across YACL (Yet Another Class Library) The library scources are free for download from http://www.cs.sc.edu/~sridhar/yacl.html

    There's also a book on it Building Portable C++ Applications with YACL isbn: 0201832763

    Just thought I'd throw that one into the pot too.

    -C

    --
    -Put a stop to procrastination... Later....
  5. I use forte but... by ehovland · · Score: 3

    There are several choices for solaris. dtbuilder, which is very simple and featureless but free and already in CDE/solaris. Sun's forte development environment, which can be try-n-buyed for 30 days or bought for anywhere between 300 (edu price) and 3500 USD. Both Kdevelop and GLADE work under solaris. Teleuse is actually not sold by telesoft, but by a company called aonix.

    Just choose one of those options and you will be fine. If I had a choice myself I would use either Kdevelop or forte. Kdevelop because it uses qt so it is entirely c++ (which seems to be a requirement for you) as well as the possibility of portability since qt runs on windows. Forte, because Sun makes it so it will have Sun support as well as having a significant performance advantage on sparc.

    If you decide on motif as your windowing toolkit and use forte and you have oodles of money in your pocket. Consider adding XRT. Very many high quality widgets which can improve the look of just about any gui.

  6. Why not BX-Pro? by JohnZed · · Score: 2

    BX-Pro from ICS sounds like exactly what you're looking for. It spits out C or C++ for Motif, or Java. They're the company supporting MotifZone.net, which hosts the new "Open" Motif release. --JRZ