Subject: Re: wintif
From: [email-masked] ("Adam Miller")

17 Oct 1996 12:50:59 -0700
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> 
> > Alternatively, can anyone give me good advice re. porting an
> > application from X/Motif UNIX (g++) to Win32 using gun-win32 and some
> > other tool/kit to slot in easily instead of X/Motif?
> 
 I've had some good success using Exceed by Hummingbird.  Exceed is an
X-server product that runs on NT.  They supply a development kit with 
a motif, xt, x library.  You compile your motif code on NT with their
libraries and
you can run the app locally with their X-server.  Note that the app
maintains the motif
look/feel and can be quite discomforting to end users who might be
expecting a native
ms-windows app on their workstation.

However, the Exceed library performs remarkably well.   I ported a very
large motif app from
a Unix (mostly sun) platform to NT.   This app had it's own widgets and
subclassed many of 
the motif widgets.  Exceed handled it rather well.   Of course, Exceed
doesn't account for any
function calls that fall out of the realm of X, like any unix
functionality.  So, the scope is more
limited than NuTcracker.   The biggest problem with Exceed was their
handling of XtAppAddInput,
and the whole handling of sockets in general.  The app I ported had many
sockets open collecting
realtime data (a stock market application).  I had to rewire the handling
of XtAppAddInput, spawn
off a seperate thread to multiplex the sockets and pass the messages back
to the thread running the
X loop.  I don't know if Exceed 5 addresses any of these problems, I had
significant exposure to Exceed 4.

I checked out NutCracker also, and at the time the licensing fees where not
worth it.   I think they've changed
their approach.  I understand they take the same tack as Hummingbird,
supplying a motif/X library that
works with their X server.   They advertise that their X server can display
the apps using an ms-windows
look/feel.   They also hinted that they were moving in a direction whereby
the X-server would be more transparent,
whereby the end user would not know that it was there.

Using the Exceed approach, we had a hard time convincing customers that the
application they were
using was a native NT app.   Every time we demoed the thing, people thought
that we were just using an X server
and running the app on a unix box.  We chose the Exceed approach to
maintain a very high profile account and
to port the app to NT as quick as possible.  If we had the time, it
probably would have been better to rearchitect
the application to NT, perhaps using wxWindows or something.   The whole
motif on NT approach ended up being
counter productive to the whole business aspect of selling software.  It
was just too foreign for people to accept.

The other approach was Bristol which goes the other way around, takes
Win32/MFC code and allows it
to be compiled on unix with a motif look/feel.  However, that doesn't help
musch when you have a large
body of motif code you want to do something with on the NT front.

The real solution, don't embed software design into limiting frameworks
like Motif or Win32.  If
the business processing had been better divorced from the display
presentation, the idea of porting
to a totally disparate environment might not have seemed so painful.

Adam Miller
Appleby Technologies Inc.
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