Re: Fedora Core 6 to drop OpenMotif

["Pete R. Jemian" <prjemian@ameritech.net>]

More $0.02 worth of comments...

It is time to consider dropping the dependence
and development in X11 in favor of more modern
cross-platform GUI environments.  Of course
Java is one that comes to mind.  Python with
appropriate add-ons is yet another.

As Ernest said, CSS is an activity emerging on this front.

Pete


Ernest L. Williams Jr. wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 00:30 +0200, Benjamin Franksen wrote:
>
> > On Thursday 31 August 2006 20:24, Andrew Johnson wrote:
> >
> > > Since a signficant number of EPICS extensions (ALH, DM2K, EDM, MEDM,
> > > Probe, StripTool) make use of Motif, I think it's worthwhile
> > > repeating
> > >
> > > this news item from Linux Weekly News here:
> > >
> > > > Fedora Core to drop openmotif [Distributions] Posted Aug 31, 2006
> > > > 16:13 UTC (Thu) by corbet
> > > >
> > > > It's official: Fedora Core 6 will not include the openmotif
> > > > library, which has a non-free license. The library will be removed
> > > > prior to the October 2 development freeze. As a result, a number of
> > > > packages using openmotif (including cmucl, ddd, nedit, and xpdf)
> > > > will break; they, too, will be removed if they cannot be shifted
> > > > over to lesstif in the next month.
> > >
> > > Full Story at http://lwn.net/Articles/197744/
> > >
> > >
> > > This won't prevent OpenMotif from being installed on FC6 machines,
> > > but it will involve extra work.  FC6 will include LesTif, but that's
> > > not 100% compatible with the original, and I know we had problems
> > > with it before OpenMotif came out.
> >
> > I would not recommend using LessTif for anything that should work 
> > reliably and emphatically not as a replacement in EPICS applications 
> > that are based on (Open)Motif.
> >
> > One example: my favourite text editor 'NEdit', an otherwise extremely 
> > stable and actively maintained program, is almost completely unusable 
> > with LessTif. The developers insist that this is not their fault: 
> > LessTif simply remains bug ridden, despite several reports, some of 
> > them _years_ ago. It just seems that LessTif doesn't attract enough 
> > active developers to really get rid of these problems.
> >
> > OTOH, I have to warn that switching from Motif to a completely different 
> > GUI library, such as GTK or Qt (as suggested by Kay), or possibly to 
> > some portable library such as wxWindows, in practice means a complete 
> > rewrite, at least of the GUI part of the app. This is a _considerable_ 
> > effort. New applications are, of course, a different matter, as is the 
> > case where a rewrite is planned anyway.
>
>
> The EPICS EXTENSIONS have lasted a very long time and we all enjoy them.
>
> So, what is next?  Yes, maybe a re-write is in order for the future
> longevity and maintainability. :)
>
> The activity from the Control Systems Studio team has gotten a start
> down the path.
>  
>
>
>
>
>
> > Just my 2c.
> > Ben