🚀 go-pugleaf

pmartz@dsd.es.com (Paul Martz) writes:

>Well, I hear PEXlib more often advertised as an SPI -- systems
>programmer interface, not intended for use by applications.
>Applications which directly use PEXlib should know what they are
>getting themselves into. Look at how few programmers today use Xlib,
>most use any of the toolkits or other APIs currently available.

What are the options then?  We've just "discovered" that DEC bundled 
PEXlib with the latest Motif release for the DecStation (OK down here
we're a bit behind!)  Looking at the documentation, it seems as if the
PEXlib implements functions that are very similar to those we currently
use with Phigs.  We've been looking for some time to use Phigs (or 
something similar) under X, but the Phigs/X widget provided misses out
much of the functionality we need.  At first glance it seemed (to me)
that it wouldn't be too difficult to rewrite our graphics to use 
PEXlib.  Yet everywhere I've looked, I've seen people saying not to!
Could you give me a short explanation of why using PEXlib is not a good
idea, of why Phigs (or something else) may be better, and what serious
options there are for programming 3D graphics under X?

If it helps, here's a bit of info:  We've used GKS for many years (yuk!)
under VWS on vaxen, a little bit of Phigs, and are now moving fully over
to an X/Motif environment.  Our graphics needs are for both 2D and 3D, 
and are for general output from a finite element package (also our own).
We are currently running on Vaxes and Decstations, and would like to do
some things on an Indigo (guess that means GL).

Thanks for any help or explanation you can give; we are hoping to rewrite
all of our graphics later in the year, and would like to make the best
possible start that will let us use the full measure of hardware and 
software that we have/will have.

Greg.

-- 
Greg Sands.                           |  Department of Engineering Science
-----------                           |  University of Auckland           
g.sands@aukuni.ac.nz                  |  New Zealand.