🚀 go-pugleaf

>>> On Mon, 6 Dec 1993 14:33:16 GMT, nholtz@superior.carleton.ca (Neal
>>> Holtz) said:

Neal> Recipients of free software have no right to expect anything, [
Neal> ... ]

I agree completely with you; I am a free sw author myself. But there is
a huge difference between "expecting" and "suggesting": and all the
trouble about the !@#$ OSF license is about making it very obvious to
free sw authors that if they choose Motif some/many people will not be
able to enjoy their work because of highly unusual and perhaps startling
licensing restrictions on runtime binaries.

Free sw authors remain free to use OSF/Motif, and for that matter to
write free sw that cannot be ported to anything else but Windows 3.1, an
even more highly proprietary environment; but some do care about wider
enjoyability of their work, and some/most perhaps had not realized that
in some/many/most cases OSF/Motif now requires runtime binary royalties,
unlike 99% of other libraries on the market.

After all the noise and shouting, I hope that free sw authors know about
the consequences of making their work dependent on OSF/Motif. They
remain free to choose either way, and will still get loud cheers if they
make their works dependent OSF/Motif, but even louder cheers if they
don't.

Apart from making everybody aware of the extremely unusual licensing of
OSF/Motif, two positive effects have been achieved: there is now a
project to make a library compatible with the OSF/Motif API, and some
good folks at NCSA or otherwise have, in some case out of spite :-> (see
the article that started this thread), proved that a well written
program need not be _that_ dependant on any specific toolkit API.

Incidentally, I did not mention this before, I am sorry: another free sw
author has done a generic, simplified toolkit API library called wxWin;
it offers the usual facilities provided for by most toolkits, and can be
compiled to support OSF/Motif, XView/OpenLook or Windows 3.1; I don't
have any personal experience of using it, but the demos look impressive
and I have been told it is rather solid, and more bells&whistles are
being added.

It would seem to me a rather reasonable alternative to the leading
contender in the contest for toolkit of choice for free sw, Tcl/Tk.

Here is the leaflet describing it:

========================================================================

*****                  Announcing wxWindows 1.50                  *****
***** A Free C++ GUI toolkit for Motif, Open Look and Windows 3.1 *****

>>> wxWindows is a toolkit for developing Windows 3 and
    X applications from the same body of C++ code.

Since the source is provided, wxWindows allows the programmer to add
features as needed. For many programmers, however, wxWindows should be
adequate for a range of applications.

>>> Uses include:

* development of applications for delivery on both X and Windows

* development on one platform for delivery on another

* single-platform development, as a high-level wrapper around XView,
  Motif or Windows

>>> Included in this fourth release:

* Simple-to-use, object-oriented API

* Graphics calls include splines, polylines, rounded rectangles, etc.

* XView-style programmatic panel/dialog item layout

* Support for menu bars and status lines

* Toolbar class

* Pens, brushes, fonts, icons, cursors, bitmaps

* Easy, object-oriented interprocess comms (DDE subset) under
  Windows 3 *and* UNIX

* Encapsulated PostScript generation under UNIX, Windows 3 printing on PC

* Virtually automatic MDI support under Windows

* Support for Windows 3 printer and file selector common dialogs, with
  equivalents for UNIX

* Under Windows 3, support for copying metafiles to the clipboard

* Programmatic form facility for building form-like screens fast,
  with constraints on values

* wxHelp hypertext help system, accessible from applications

* Optional interface to NASA's CLIPS, so an interpreted GUI-building facility can
  be included in wxWindows programs, or used stand-alone.

* All source

* Several examples

* Comprehensive reference manual, with reference in wxHelp form

>>> Requirements:

* On PC, Microsoft C/C++ or Borland C++ 3.1 (sorry, no Borland makefiles yet)
* On UNIX, XView 3.1 or Motif 1.1 and GCC/G++ (or compatible compiler, such as
  AT&T C++)
* Under DOS, maximum 8 MB of disk space, including object files

>>> Where to get it

wxWindows is currently available from the Artificial Intelligence
Applications Institute by anonymous FTP.

FTP to skye.aiai.ed.ac.uk (192.41.104.6), log on as `anonymous', and
give your user ID as password. Change directory into pub/wxwin, change
transmission method to binary, and get wxwin150.tar.Z (UNIX) and/or
wxwin150.zip (PC).  Both archives contain the source code for both
platforms, but only the executable demos for the specific platform
(UNIX and Windows respectively). The demos are available separately as
demo.tar.Z (or wxwindem.tar.Z) and demo.zip (or wxwindem.zip).

wxWindows is expected to be uploaded to the CICA Windows 3 archive at
Indiana University (ftp.cica.indiana.edu), and the British HENSA public
domain software archive (pdsoft.lancs.ac.uk).

>>> Installation

See install.txt.

>>> Bugs, etc.

wxWindows, like most other software, has the occasional buglet. I
would be grateful for bug reports (even better, fixes) though I can't
guarantee to do anything about them. Future releases of wxWindows are
likely to be more stable and more complete.  Meanwhile, do send me your
enhancements, and I will try to incorporate them in future releases.
Here are some ideas for contributions:

* more Xlib wrappers
* an enhanced, editable text subwindow for Windows
* an Xt-like constraint algorithm for laying out widgets
* a Mac version

>>> wxWindows discussion forum

There is a mailing list for users or potential users of wxWindows.
Send a request to wxwin-users-request@aiai.ed.ac.uk to subscribe
the mailing list.

>>> In the pipeline

* Better clipboard support
* A Windows NT version
* Automated GUI testing facilities
* DevGuide to wxWindows utility (user contribution)
* Text-only CURSES version (user contribution)

------------------------------------------------------------------
Julian Smart, September 1993

Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute
University of Edinburgh
80 South Bridge
Edinburgh
Scotland
EH1 1HN

EMAIL: J.Smart@ed.ac.uk
TEL:   031 650 2746