XView Toolkit Source Available Now

[Richard Probst]

Sun Microsystems is extremely proud to announce the public availability of
the complete source for the XView toolkit, the OLWM window manager, a few
sample XView applications, and a collection of commercial-quality Lucida
bitmap fonts from Bigelow & Holmes.

XView is an X toolkit based on the OPEN LOOK (tm) Graphical User
Interface.  XView's API is very similar to the API of the SunView toolkit;
in practice, most SunView applications can be converted to XView in a few
days, although some will take longer.  Since there are more than 2000
SunView applications, we expect that releasing XView will immediately
create a large base of X11 applications.

OLWM is an ICCCM-compliant window manager, also based on the OPEN LOOK
GUI.  OLWM is a "stand-alone" window manager, not dependent on any toolkit
code.  We hope that OLWM will become the standard example of an
ICCCM-compliant window manager in X11 R4.  (Caution: OLWM is not a perfect
example of ICCCM behavior yet.  It will be.)

Also available is the source to three useful applications and fifteen
simple example programs.  The three XView applications are clock,
textedit, and cmdtool/shelltool (a terminal emulator).  In addition, we
are including a script that helps convert SunView programs to XView by
flagging the application code that needs to be changed.

The Bigelow & Holmes Lucida bitmap fonts are a collection of different
type styles and point sizes in the Lucida typeface.  In addition, XView
uses "glyph fonts" to accelerate the painting of some OPEN LOOK GUI
graphical elements, and these fonts are also being made available.  Note
that these glyph fonts must be added to your X11 R3 server in order to run
XView applications.

All of this source will be included in the X11 R4 release, available from
MIT later this year (and you will not need to add the glyph fonts to the
X11 R4 server).  An ALPHA version of the source is available today from
expo.  Details are given below.  A second machine is being arranged on the
West Coast, and will be announced shortly.

With licensed source products from Sun, source is usually not released
until several months after a binary version of the product has shipped.
The extra time is used to "clean up" the source for external consumption.
In contrast, we are releasing an ALPHA version of XView and OLWM now,
before the binary version of XView has shipped.  We will continue to fix
bugs and portability problems as we find them, and these changes will be
made available periodically between now and the release of X11 R4.  In
particular, this version of XView source does not (ahem, -cough-) lint
cleanly.  This problem is only partly due to XView's extensive use of
varargs.  XView source will lint cleanly (with the exception of the
varargs complaints) in time for the release of X11 R4.

We are releasing an alpha version of the source at this time in order to
promote OPEN LOOK, to increase the number of ports of XView ready when X11
R4 ships, and to encourage the notion that X toolkit source should be
free.  We will update this free source to track changes that Sun makes in
XView, including bug fixes, performance improvements, and new features.
This is not a one-time "snapshot"; Sun has selected the MIT X11
distribution as our XView source distribution channel.

Sun has implemented XView on four architectures: Sun4, Sun3, Sun386i, and
DECstation 3100.  In addition, there are about a dozen ports under way by
other hardware vendors or third-party software vendors.  In some cases,
Sun is paying for the port and will own the rights to any code changes; we
will give these changes away.  In other cases, vendors will sell XView on
a particular hardware or OS base; obviously, their changes are their added
value.  We encourage both uses of this source donation.  

If you discover bugs in XView or OLWM, or if you port them and discover
portability problems that you are willing to fix for the X community,
please send your bug reports to xviewbugs at sun.com (...!sun!xviewbugs).

Bug reports with suggested fixes are obviously the best sort.  We will use
xviewbugs at sun.com to try to make XView and OLWM as bug-free and portable
as possible in time for X11 R4.

Open discussion about XView or OLWM ("Anybody figure out how to... ?")
should occur on xpert at expo.lcs.mit.edu (or comp.windows.x).  We will
answer questions of general interest as time permits.  Please do not send
questions to xviewbugs at sun.com; that is only for bug reports.

XView and OLWM are available now via anonymous ftp to expo.lcs.mit.edu in
the directory /contrib/XView/

XView.tar.Z	libraries, documents, examples, fonts (compressed)
	--OR the above broken into 8 parts--
XView.tar.1.Z	Part 1 of 8, subset of XView.tar.Z (compressed)
XView.tar.2.Z	Part 2 of 8, subset of XView.tar.Z (compressed)
XView.tar.3.Z	Part 3 of 8, subset of XView.tar.Z (compressed)
XView.tar.4.Z	Part 4 of 8, subset of XView.tar.Z (compressed)
XView.tar.5.Z	Part 5 of 8, subset of XView.tar.Z (compressed)
XView.tar.6.Z	Part 6 of 8, subset of XView.tar.Z (compressed)
XView.tar.7.Z	Part 7 of 8, subset of XView.tar.Z (compressed)
XView.tar.8.Z	Part 8 of 8, subset of XView.tar.Z (compressed)

XViewConversion.tar.Z   script to help convert SunView programs

olwm.tar.Z	OLWM Window Manager (compressed)

When uncompressed from the tar files, there will be approximately 8.3Mb of
toolkit code, examples, fonts and documentation.  OLWM will be less than
1Mb.  The compressed XView tar file is a single 2.8Mb file (or eight
 ~500Kb files).  The compressed OLWM tar file is a ~100Kb file.

Documentation on XView, in PostScript source format, is included in the
XView tar file.  There are two documents, called

	XView 1.0 Reference Manual: Summary of the XView API
	XView 1.0 Reference Manual: Converting SunView Applications

Pre-printed versions of these manuals may also be ordered (at the cost of
media and shipping) from Sun Microsystems by ordering Part Numbers
800-2482-10 and 800-2483-10.  In addition, a comprehensive programmer's
reference manual for XView is being prepared by O'Reilly & Associates,
Inc.  Contact O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. directly to order the

	XView Programming Manual

	O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
	  632 Petaluma Avenue
	  Sebastopol, CA  95472
	  (800)338-6887
	EMAIL: uunet!ora!xview

XView requires the use of an ICCCM-compliant window manager, such as
OLWM.  Further, XView requires full ICCCM support in Xlib. This will be
standard in X11 R4.  In order to run with an X11 R3 version of Xlib,
you must define the PRE_R4_ICCCM compile-time flag when you compile
XView.

To build XView, you must also have the X Window System source.  XView
requires standard utilities from the X Window System source tree, such
as imake, bdftosnf, and mkfontdir.

Please direct comments or questions about this source donation to
xpert at expo.lcs.mit.edu (or comp.windows.x).

And thank you for your support.

	--Richard Probst (rprobst at sun.com)