Motif vs OpenGL ... need advise ....

[JRed]

Hi ... I'm new to both Motif and Open GL ... and am currently at a crossroad
...

What are the advantages/disadvantages of Motif/OpnGL as compared to one
another ?

Thanks,
Joseph.

[Øyvnd Hagen]

JRed wrote:

I wouldn't sink my time/effort into Motif. If you want a widget toolkit
then go for something like gtk(which is way superior).
You also have the possibility to use OGL in gtk(through a gtkglarea
widget). Or just aopen a seperate window for the GL drawing.
There is also some licensing issues with Motif(If you have your hart set
on Motif, then take a look at Lesstif instead, which is free software).

OGL dosen't provide widgets, and isn't meant too either. It's more a
lowlevel graphics library.

I think gtk has/is beeing ported to win32. You also have qtk which also
runs on a wide variety of platforms. qtk also has a gl widget.

So basically you are comparing a widget toolkit with a lowlevel graphics
library. They are not mutally exclusive.

--
joink.adios/losers
-- Snake, professional hold-up artist

[César Blecua Udías]

It's not possible to compare one against the other, since Motif is a GUI
toolkit, and OpenGL is a graphics library. An exception is perhaps when
you use OpenGL for rendering the user interface (like the GLUI toolkit),
but in general it just makes no sense to compare Motif with OpenGL.

Nowadays, Motif has been renamed as OpenMotif (only for open source
operating systems, such as Linux), and it's free and open source for
those operating systems. If you use a commercial non-opensource UNIX,
Motif is usually shipped with the OS. Motif has been the industry
standard GUI in UNIX for a long, long time. Lesstif is a Motif clone,
developed under the GNU license.

Also, note that GUI toolkits have nowadays become a subject for
flamewars. Even users of the same operating system love to flame each
other about which GUI toolkit is best. The best is always to read
*technical* specs and ignore infantile flamewars.

For a list of GUI toolkits, check
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/7184/guitool.html

For more OpenMotif information, check http://www.motifzone.net and
http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif

For more Lesstif information, check http://www.lesstif.org

For more OpenGL information, http://www.opengl.org

César
cesar...@ono.com

[Paul Martz]

"JRed" <jred...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3b37...@news.iprimus.com.au...

> What are the advantages/disadvantages of Motif/OpnGL as compared to one
> another ?

You can't really compare the two, since Motif is a user interface toolkit
and OpenGL is a 3D graphics rendering specification. It is typical to use
both in the same application for multi-vendor *nix code.
--
-Paul Martz (paul_...@hp.com)
Hewlett Packard TCD Personal Workstations Lab
OpenGL FAQ: http://www.opengl.org/developers/faqs/technical.html
http://www.frii.com/~martz/oglfaq