86) What GUI tools exist to assist in developing Motif applications?

[Last modified: Nov 96 ]

Answer:  [Nov 96 update: added Loox and LXB info; revised MetaCard info.]

[A FAQ is not for "personal opinions" on these tools.  I don't think it is
appropriate to give such opinions through this particular posting, so I
haven't included any. I will include vendor-provided descriptions provided
they are concise and informative. See Subject 0 for contribution details.]

`Prototyping tools' and `code generation tools' come in two forms:

    GUI (Graphical User Interface) builder -
    those that can be used to design (and perhaps rehearse)
    the interface only ; and

    UIMS (User Interface Management Systems) -
    those that are a system supporting the development and
    execution of user interfaces.

However, this distinction can be somewhat arbitrary when specific tools are
categorized as either one or the other.  (Therefore, the classification below
should be taken with a kilogram of salt. :-)

A number of commercial and non-commercial tools of both kinds that will
support Motif are listed below. [NOTE: Vendors or individuals wishing to add
their product or tool to this list, or to change their entry, should email to
the maintainer of this FAQ.]

GUI builders:

        Builder Xcessory (bx)
        Bx/Loox
        Druid
        ExoCODE/xm
        iXBUILD (formerly X Build)
        MOTIFATION
        WKSH (Windowing Korn Shell)
        X-Designer

UIMS:

        ALEX
        ezX User Interface Management System
        Galaxy
        MetaCard
        Serpent
        TAE Plus
        TeleUse
        UIMX
        VXP (Visual X windows Programming Interface)
        Widget Creation Library (Wcl)
        WINTERP
        XFaceMaker2


For users of the WWW, see also Brad A. Myers' `User Interface Software Tools'
list (which is not limited to Motif tools):
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/bam/www/toolnames.html

Thanks to Robin Schald (wald@tfh-berlin.de) for updating the above URL.


Some contact addresses, presented in alphabetical order (without regard to GUI
or UIMS categorization), follow:


o  ALEX:  For more information contact Michael Karliner on (+44) 81 566 2307
or E-mail to alex@s-strat.co.uk.  ALEX Technologies, Waterman's Yard, 32a The
Mall, Ealing, London W5, UK.


o  Builder Xcessory (bx): is from ICS.  More details are available by sending
a request to info@ics.com.  Address:

        ICS Inc.,
        201 Broadway,
        Cambridge MA 02139,
        Tel. (617) 621-0060,
        Fax. (617) 621-9555
        http://www.ics.com/


o  BxLoox is an integrated GUI development environment for Motif GUIs
containing dynamic screens. Containing the Builder Xcessory GUI builder from
Integrated Computer Solutions and the Loox dynamic graphics development tool,
BxLoox allows developers to interactively create every aspect of their
interface, including Motif widgets, structured graphics, animated graphics and
data visualization.  Features include :

 - object oriented design, based on the Doug Young method
 - C and C++ code generation
 - intelligent graphics primitives
 - animation, blinking etc
 - dynamic control objects (knobs, dials, sliders, digital readouts)
 - LOOXMaker graphical editor for interactive primitive creation and animation
 - 2D and 3D charting widgets

Contact:

        Loox Software Inc.
        4962 El Camino Real, # 206
        Los Altos, CA 94022
        voice : (415)903-0942
        fax: (415)903-9824
        url: http://www.loox.com
        email: sales@loox.com


o  Druid: is a commercial product. It currently supports Motif1.1 and 4 unix
platforms: SPARC, HP 9000, RS6000, and SGI. For further information contact:

        Mr. Fred Lee,
        Automated Systems (Pte) Limited,
        203 Henderson Road, #12-07/14,
        Henderson Industrial Park,
        Singapore 0315.
        FAX: (65)272-2029


Or: Dr. Gurminder Singh (gsingh@iss.nus.sg), Institute of Systems Science,
National University of Singapore


o  ExoCODE/xm:  By Expert Object Corp., 7250 Cicero Avenue, Lincolnwood, IL
60646 (708)676-5555.  Also:  ExoCODE, EXOC, 500 Hyacinth Place, Highland Park,
IL, 60035, (708) 926-8500, Motif or OpenLook or SunView.


o  ezX: Contact information:

        ezX User Interface Management System
        Sunrise Software, International
        170 Enterprise Center
        Middletown, RI 02840
        401-847-7868
        email: support@sunrise.com


o  Galaxy, Visix Software Inc., 11440 Commerce Park Drive, Reston, VA, 22091,
(800) 832-8668, Mac, Windows, Motif, OpenLook; very complete, Virtual Toolkit,
UIMS

o LXB: Linux X11/Motif GUI Builder is a sharware tool for Motif 1.2 or Motif
2.0 which you can obtain from:

        http://www.tc.umn.edu/nlhome/g257/parki005/lxb/lxb.html

Thanks to Allen Fogleson (foggie@dtx.net) for mentioning LXB.  The author,
bruce.parkin-1@umn.edu, writes:

        Please note that lxb is a work in progress. Not all Motif
        widgets are available, nor can all resources be edited.
        There are many features of a good GUI builder yet to be done.


o  MetaCard: MetaCard is a cross-platform multimedia authoring tool and GUI
development environment for Unix/X11 workstations and Microsoft Windows 95 and
NT.  Using MetaCard is the easiest way to build Motif and Win32 applications,
Computer Based Training (CBT), on-line documentation, and a wide variety of
other products.  Applications developed with MetaCard are portable to 13
UNIX/X11 workstations and Microsoft Win32 without recompiling or other
preprocessing and have native look and feel on all platforms.  MetaCard
includes a complete GUI builder, GUI script debugger, and a powerful scripting
language with features and performance similar to Perl (which is up to 30
times the performance of Tcl/Tk), but which is much easier to learn and use.

        MetaCard Corporation
        4710 Shoup pl.
        Boulder, CO  80303
        303-447-3936
        303-499-9855 (fax)
        http://www.metacard.com
        info@metacard.com


o  MOTIFATION:  PEM GmbH, Vaihinger Strasse 49, 7000 Stuttgart 80, Germany,
Tel: +49 (0) 711 713045, Fax: +49 (0) 711 713047 Email: basien@pem-
stuttgart.de.  Available for (Motif 1.2/1.1) on SunOS, Solaris 2.1, HP,
Interactive, ODT 3.0, Silicon Graphics, PCS, ...


o  Serpent:  The S/W is free (anonymous ftp) from ftp.sei.cmu.edu.  For more
info contact erik/robert at serpent-info@sei.cmu.edu.  NOTE: This is no longer
supported, and is apparently replaced by a commercial product called Alpha.


o  TAE Plus: TAE Plus is a mature, portable software development environment
that supports rapid prototyping, tailoring, and management of Motif-based
graphical user interfaces.  It particularly supports GUI development by non-
programmers and by programmers who are not well-versed in the details of X and
Motif.  Its code generator can produce C, C++, and Ada code and allows for
automatic merging of regenerated code with previously modified parts of the
interface code.  It supports generation of a UIL/Mrm representation of the
interface.

Scripting capabilities are provided to facilitate automatic testing, on-line
demos, and tutorials.  A record and playback feature lets you build scripts
simply by interacting with your GUI.  Dynamic Data Objects allow the developer
to create pictorial objects (e.g., a thermometer to show temperature), whose
dynamic portions (e.g., the mercury in the themometer) can change to reflect
changing data or be directly manipulated by the end-user. TAE Plus is
available on Sun, HP, IBM, SGI, and SCO Unix platforms.  Evaluation software
is available via anonymous ftp.

TAE Plus contact information:

        Century Computing, Inc.
        8101 Sandy Spring Road
        Laurel, MD 20707
        1-800-823-3228
        tae-info@cen.com
        http://www.cen.com/tae/


o  TeleUSE: (updated Sept. 95) Built around X Windows and OSF/Motif, TeleUSE's
comprehensive toolset gives you maximum control over every phase of graphical
user interface development, including static screen layout and design,
automatic implementation of callbacks, building the executable, and the
interactive test, debug, and maintenance cycles.  For more information, please
contact:

In North America and countries not specified below:

        Thomson Software Products (formerly Alsys)
        http://www.thomsoft.com/
        10251 Vista Sorrento Parkway, Suite 300
        San Diego, CA  92121
        619-457-2700 x244
        619-452-2117 (fax)
        guiinfo@thomsoft.com

        In France:  1 41 48 10 10
        In the UK:  0491 579 090
        In Sweden:  08 707 3060
        In Germany:  72 1 98653 0
        In Japan:  45 451 2412
        In Korea:  2 508 0098
        In India:  91 11 688 5974
        In Singapore:  65 481 8888
        In Australia:  6 257 1729

There's a TeleUSE FAQ:
        http://www.jagunet.com/dalmatian/TeleUSE.html (HTML)
        ftp://ftp.jagunet.com/pub/users/dalmatian/TeleUSE.FAQ (ASCII)


o  UIMX:

        Visual Edge Software Limited
        3870 Cote Vertu
        St Laurent, Quebec
        H4R 1V4
        Phone: (514) 332-6430
        Fax:   (514) 332-5914
or:
        Visual Edge Software Ltd.
        101 First Street, Suite 443
        Los Altos, CA 94022
        Phone: (415) 948-0753
        Fax:   (415) 948-0843


o  VXP (Visual X windows Programming Interface):

Yong Chen (stdyxc05@pip.shsu.edu) developed a Motif GUI builder called VXP --
Visual X windows Programming Interface. VXP has some UIMS capabilities. VXP is
now distributed as a freeware, and has been ported to SGI irix, HP hp-ux, Sun
OS4 and Solaris 2.x, DEC OSF/1, IBM AIX, Linux, SCO, NetBSD.  For more
information, visit VXP's WWW home page at

        http://www.shsu.edu/~stdyxc05/VXP/
or ftp at
        ftp.shsu.edu    /pub/VXP/


o  Widget Creation Library (Wcl):  The distribution is available in several
ways.  The preferred approach it for you to get the compressed tar file using
anonymous ftp from:


        ftp://ftp.x.org/R5contrib/Wcl-2.5.tar.Z  (X11R5 version)
        ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/devel_tools/Wcl-2.7.tar.gz (X11R6 gzip)
        ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/devel_tools/Wcl-2.7.tar.Z (X11R6 compressed)
or:
        ftp://ftp.crl.research.digital.com/pub/X11/contrib/devel_tools/Wcl-2.6.tar.Z
        ftp://ftp.crl.research.digital.com/pub/X11/contrib/devel_tools/Wcl-2.7.tar.Z
        ftp://ftp.crl.research.digital.com/pub/X11/contrib/devel_tools/Wcl-2.7.tar.gz


o  WINTERP: (Widget INTERPreter) An object-oriented rapid prototyping,
development and delivery environment for building extensible applications with
the OSF/Motif UI Toolkit and Xtango-based graphics/animation. By Niels Mayer
(mayer@netcom.com).  Mailing list: winterp-request@netcom.com. Available via
ftp from ftp.x.org:/contrib/devel_tools/winterp-2.xx.tar.gz (where 'xx' is
currently '03').

Key WINTERP Features:

        * High-level, Object-oriented interface to OSF/Motif and Xtoolkit.
        * High-level object-oriented 2.5D graphics&animation widget based
          on Xtango path transition animation system.
        * Ability to easily create new widget classes w/ complex graphical
          behavior using Xtango animation/graphics.
        * Automatic storeage management of all X/Xt/Motif data, Pixmaps,
          animations. Automatic resource conversion and management.
        * Asynchronous communications w/ other unix programs via
          expect-based subprocess facility.
        * Includes XmGraph to display graphs (both cyclic, acyclic,
          directed, undirected); graph nodes can be arbitrary widgets
          created by WINTERP; supports direct manipulation editing of graph.
        * GIF image support.
        * Lisp-eval server architecture supports inter-application
          communication.
        * Interactive programming via Gnu-Emacs or Motif-Text-widget interface.
        * Portable, small, fast, and free.


o  WKSH (Windowing Korn Shell):

        EXtensible Korn Shell (C language calling interface,
        dynamic library loading, etc.)
        Motif or OpenLook API
        X Toolkit Intrinsics
        WKSH Convenience Functions
        Fast Learning and Prototyping Feature (ksh interpreter)
Contact:
        Acacia Computer,
        PO Box 4376,
        Warren, NJ 07059,
        Phone: 908 548 6955,
        Email: uunet!aca1


or: Computer Aid Inc, 1-(800)-444-WKSH, or:


        Consensys Corp,
        Europe: +(44)-734-833241 (Roger Chalke), +(44)0734-835391 (Fax),
        US: (416)-940-2903, (416)-940-2903 (Fax).


WKSH was developed by USL. Binaries are available through Acacia Computer for
SUNOS, Solaris, SCO ODT, Intel SVR4.0


o  X-Designer:  a GUI builder for both Motif and Microsoft Windows.  From one
design C or C++ code can be generated for building with the X/Motif or the
Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) libraries using only the native toolkits.

        Imperial Software Technology
        Berkshire House
        252 Kings Road
        Reading
        RG1 4HP
        UK
        TEL: +44 118 958 7055
        FAX: +44 118 958 9005

        120 Hawthorne Avenue, Suite 101
        Palo Alto, CA 94301 USA
        (415) 688 0200
        (415) 688 1054 (fax)

        sales@ist.co.uk
        URL: http://www.ist.co.uk


o  XFaceMaker2:

        NSL -  Non Standard Logics S.A.,
        57-59, rue Lhomond,
        75005  Paris - France,
        Phone: +33 (1) 43.36.77.50,
        Fax:   +33 (1) 43.36.59.78
        email: requests@nsl.fr or requests%nsl.fr@inria.fr for information.

Their North American office:

        Non Standard Logics, Inc.,
        4141 State Street, Suite B-11,
        Santa Barbara CA 93110,
        Tel: 805 964 9599,
        Fax: 805 964 4367