Iris UI's: Forms, tk, etc.

[Michael Portuesi]

In article <1991Jun20.225914.26517 at nas.nasa.gov>,
dwallach at nas.nasa.gov (Dan Wallach) writes:
|> 
|> I'm curious if anybody can complete this picture for me.

I'll give it my best shot...

|> If you do a strings on one of those SGI programs with all
|> the cute buttons (like vadmin) you see lots of things like
|> "tkButton", "tkObject", etc.  There are also things
|> in there like "tkButton.c++".
|> 
|> One might assume that SGI's user interface thing is written
|> in C++ and called tk.  Is this available externally?

Silicon Graphics has never offered its own user interface toolkit. 
This is still an area of active consideration within SGI.  The
WorkSpace and System Manager were both developed in C++ using a common
body of software called "tk".  However, "tk" is not a complete user
interface toolkit that can support a diverse variety of applications
software.  Furthermore, it is not possible to develop "tk" into such
an environment.  For that reason, it was decided not to make it
available externally, and its use within SGI has been limited
primarily to the WorkSpace and System Manager products.  Most new
software projects within SGI are designing their user interfaces using
OSF/Motif.  Some projects, such as Showcase, have implemented their
own user interface code.

|> 
|> Next, if you look at Forms (the excellent public domain user
|> interface system
|> by Mark Overmars), you see a suprising similarity between Forms and
|> some of
|> these SGI programs, although the shadows on the 3-D buttons are
|> different...
|>

I've looked at the Forms package.  Mark has done a very good job
emulating the look of the buttons and scrollbars in System Manager and
WorkSpace, but he certainly didn't have an ``inside line'' on the
development of those products.
 
|> Now, Overmars has told me "Almost certainly Silicon Graphics is
|> going to
|> supply the Forms Library as part of their developers package. This
|> means
|> some sort of support for the future."
|> 
|> When can I expect to see such a thing from SGI itself?  There
|> weren't any
|> Forms on our Cypress Alpha 182 compact disk.

SGI has never made a commitment to offer or support the FORMS library
as an SGI product.  Currently, we officially support the OSF/Motif
user interface toolkit, and the Showcase developers option (which
contains source code for the Showcase user interface widgets).

|> Essentially, we're trying to decide what user interface to use on a number
|> of future projects, here, and Forms would be a favorite, if it were
|> supported
|> by SGI.  (Nobody wants to mess with supporting Panel-lib any
|> more...)
|> 
|> I assume I'm not the only person curious for the answer, so I'm
|> posting
|> the question, here.

I hope you find the answer helpful.  At the recent Developers' Forum,
we solicited input on what the future of the SGI desktop environment
should look like.  If you feel that SGI should commit itself to
producing high-quality user-interface and software development
technology for its developer community, then we urge you to respond to
that survey and tell us what you want.  If you didn't attend the
Developers' Forum, we will value your input just as highly.  

Thanks,
m.

-- 
__
\/  Michael Portuesi   Silicon Graphics, Inc.   portuesi at sgi.com