I think this about refutes all the nonsense I've heard so far. I don't
intend to spend any more time on this thread.
The false factual statements that were made are that OpenMotif is not
enhanced and does not support Section 508 accessibility. In fact,
OpenMotif is supported by two companies, and non-free licenses are
available from The Open Group. On Section 508 accessibility: "[Motif]
requires no modified toolkits, no re-engineering and no recompilation."
I can't speak for those three companies, but their lawyers might have
some concerns about Sun going around telling people there is no support
for Motif and that Motif doesn't support 508 accessibility requirements.
Inline.
On Wed, 24 Jun 2009, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
Dean Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 23 Jun 2009, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
None of the arguments matter. On *Solaris* at least, motif is
effectively legacy, because *nobody* is maintaining it or writing new
applications on it.
Except that your claim above isn't true, unless you mean to limit it to
Sun or OpenSolaris. There are at least TWO commercial companies
providing support for Motif, and some more that provide binaries for
sale. That's more than there are for BIND.
Did you read the statement? I *said* *Solaris*. Doesn't that imply Sun
and OpenSolaris? Its certainly true *here*, in the OpenSolaris community.
Quite a lot of third party software runs "On Solaris". But as long as
you make the distinction between what's your opinion and what's fact,
I'm happy.
BIND doesn't need companies to sell binaries separately.
Really? It just happens by magic? In fact, Sun is/was one of the
companies that sells BIND in its Solaris product, and has for many, many
years.
The [BIND] source is freely available and redistributable.
So is OpenMotif---Under almost the same license as BIND.
And I know that more companies than that provide binaries with the
operating systems. (Pretty much all UNIX vendors provide BIND
binaries! Many, but not all of them, also provide Motif binaries.)
You're comparing apples and oranges.
We're comparing source licenses and support models. Berkeley/BIND/ISC
and OSF/OpenMotif/ICS&IST are virtually identical in their source
licence and support models.
Put another way, I can't think of any companies selling FreeBSD
binaries.
People used to sell BSD binaries (related to FreeBSD). Perhaps you've
never heard of BSDI.
But I think it would be a grave mistake to assert that this
says something about the vitality of the community behind it. And yet,
SCO (if they are even still around) was selling binaries (they might
even still be, if they can drum up any customers), yet their market
share was infinitesimal and their development community was practically
non-existent. So, I conclude that having binaries for sale is a useless
metric here.
The point is that there is a vibrant market for Motif, just like there
is a market for BIND and *BSD, even though Berkeley isn't updating the
source code.
Fair enough. I think most of the claims have been factual. Certainly,
my original statement, that Motif is legacy code and new application
developers shouldn't be writing code for it is most definitely true, at
least in the context where it was worded, which is here in the
OpenSolaris community.
Your original wording included more than the OpenSolaris community.
But how many Motif applications were there in Solaris? Outside of CDE,
which is a separate desktop manager that just uses Motif, I can't think
of any at all in Solaris. So, Motif development is kind of moot for
Solaris; *Solaris* doesn't do Motif or GTK+ development, so its sort of
a snide, malicious comment.
Whether it is or is not true in other contexts is not something I can
accurately judge, although I know *I* wouldn't be wasting my time on
CDE or Motif development these days.
Some people think they shouldn't be wasting their time on Solaris, too.
But a lot disagree. Let's just not pretend or assert that there aren't
lots of people who use and support Motif, OK?
On Tue, 23 Jun 2009, Shawn Walker wrote:
http://www.ist.co.uk/mas/s508.html
That document shows that Motif /IS/ compliant. It refutes your
claim.
Yes, but compliant with *lots of limitations* and as I noted before,
this solution is a commercial one.
There are no limitations in the document. I can't tell whether you are
unable to comprehend you read or are intentionally trying to spread FUD;
but you seem ignorant of Xserver architecture, so its seems likely that
you just don't know what you are talking about. Clarity:
That IST 508 compliance document has the text of Section 508 in bold,
and explains how Motif applications are developed in compliance with
each section of 508. GTK+ application developers have to do the same
somehow---tooltips, focus management, large icons and things don't write
themselves. Motif definitely complies with 508 WITHOUT MODIFICATION TO
MOTIF as the Overview explicitly states:
IST's Motif Accessibility Solution is non-invasive. It requires no
modified toolkits, no re-engineering and no recompilation.
Add tooltips, configure colors, fonts and navigation preferences.
Enlarge images and cursors. Run the Motif Accessibility Module with
your application to make it fully accessible.
It really is that simple.
Makes all information about your application's widgets
programmatically accessible, as required by Section 508 of the Federal
Rehabilitation Act
To emphasize again:
=========================================================================
It requires no modified toolkits, no re-engineering and no recompilation.
=========================================================================
It doesn't get any more plain than that; Motif is fully 508 compliant.
I assert that the 'official' release of OpenMotif is effectively
dead or abandoned by its original publisher.
Your assertion appears to be baseless because there is nothing wrong
with the support model, nor is that model unique. On your basis, one
could ridiculously assert that BIND, BSD etc is effectively
abandoned by
Berkeley and are therefore 'dead'. That's just nonsense.
I'm fairly certain all of those products have been updated since 2000
8)
So has Motif. Your claims otherwise are factual and false, and no doubt
the lawyers for ICS and IST would have some objection.
I will let the numbers of users of Gtk, Qt, etc. products speak for
themselves. They paint the facts in hard, cold numbers.
Sure. Except that you have no numbers. I've tried to avoid engaging in
the mud of a Motif vs Gtk or Qt, since all I care about is the false
statements and FUD about Motif. I don't really care what toolkit you
use, since it doesn't much matter. But I suggest people look at this
article.
http://theunixgeek.blogspot.com/2007/10/gtk-vs-qt.html
I'll quote just a little from the article:
"When it comes to developing GUI applications on Linux, people either
will program in GTK or QT. GTK has no formal support and you can develop
any time of application with it for free. QT, on the other hand, has an
"open source" version, in which you must agree to make all programs you
write with QT open-source. If you want to write commercial applications,
you have to shell out some cash (of course, Trolltech provides
commercial support)."
To me, it seems kind of hypocritical to advocate Qt and complain about
Motif's OpenMotif licence. But hey, everyone has their opinion.
