From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Apr 11 12:24:22 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id MAA03736 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 11 Apr 1996 12:24:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA03731 for ; Thu, 11 Apr 1996 12:24:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id MAA04557; Thu, 11 Apr 1996 12:22:23 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199604111922.MAA04557@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Lesstif (motif compatible) package. To: alk@Think.COM (Tony Kimball) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 12:22:23 -0700 (MST) Cc: hackers@freefall.freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199604111428.JAA24489@compound.think.com> from "Tony Kimball" at Apr 11, 96 09:28:18 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I disagree profoundly. Tk is the closest thing to a standard. > Moreover, Tk is portable to the major non-unix platforms, > while Motif is not. Tk is interpreted. This is a *HUGE* drawback if what you are selling is a commercial product. > has a consistent > style guide that follows IBM's CUA guidelines > Largely unused and hence of questionable relevance. It is "unused" in this regard for the same reason that people "extend" the control sets in Windows95 using OCX's: as a form of copy protection, since it means a user can't just learn the API relative to the style guidelines and apply that knowledge directly to your application, since your application doesn't follow the guidelines. Like "PCWrite" and "PCTalk", these people are selling manuals. The death of algorithmic copy protection has been the biggest boon for the documentation writing and custom controls industry since the invention of custom controls in the first place. > interoperates well with other Motif programs (e.g. > Drag and Drop) > We draw. Tk has Motif drag-and-drop interoperability? This I have got to see... > I would not dream of developing a general-purpose commercial > application using Motif, because it would lock me into a small > fraction of the Unix market, and cut off the vast majority of > potential customers. The small fraction running commercial UNIX and certified to comply with IBCS2 and the SVR4 EABI, so that you as a vendor nedd support only one binary distribution? > And of course it is completely impractical to write freeware using Motif. Only because Motif is *currently* a proprietary standard. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.