This is an announcement for yet another GUI builder for Motif. At this point
in time the tool has very little useful functionality (can't save the interface,
etc...), but what it does show, is the concept.
What I am really interested in, is if there are any suggestions, improvements,
critizism, flames ... Since this is only a prototype I can still change, add,
improve many features. Eventually I will have to rewrite this anyway, since
at the moment it is a terrible C and C++ HACK !! So don't start complaining
about the pathetic code :-), you can though, if it makes you feel better :-D

Anyway, useful (or useless) suggestions are welcome.

Unfortunately I have not created any documentation, since this is only
a prototype. But the initial design was not to allow the user to make any
fatal mistakes, so if it's an illegal thing under motif, the tool won't let
you do it (well, most of the time anyway).

A short summary:

  Motif Guide - A graphical approach to UI design.

  "Motif Guide" is a programmers tool to build Motif compliant user
interfaces by graphically designing the user interface within the 
tool and then generating the corresponding Motif "C" code to be 
linked with the rest of the application.

  Essentially "Motif Guide" lets the user (programmer) design a user
interface through an easy to use point and click GUI that will do a
certain amount of error checking so that invalid combinations of
Motif "Widgets" are not allowed. This will prevent the programmer from
making costly mistakes will would otherwise require large amounts of
debugging time.

  User Interfaces generated with this application are essentially bug
free, allowing the programmer to concentrate his efforts on the actual 
application code.

  "Motif Guide" supports all Motif 1.2.3 widgets and (at the moment) most
of their resources. I plan to add the Motif 2.0 widgets at some time in
the future.

  One of the most daunting tasks of a Motif programmer, is keeping track
of the attachments between widgets ( the relationship of one widget to
its neighbor(s) and its parent) under the form. "Motif Guide" resolves 
this issue by supplying a "Constraint(Layout) Editor" which allows the
programmer to graphically view and modify those attachments. (Left mouse
button attaches, middle mouse button moves and right mouse button displays
the current attachments in a dialog).

  Resources can be modified through the use of a "Widget Resource Editor" 
and a "Core Resource Editor" which seperates each widgets resources based
on their wether they are core resources or other resources.

(Hmmm... only the core resources are working, haven't gotton around to the
Widget resources yet)

  A "Callback Editor" and a "Documentation Editor" are currently under
design. The "Callback Editor" allows programmers to enter code for hooks
to the main application, and the "Documentation Editor" makes it
possible to enter documentation about widgets and/or groups of widgets,
which will then be included in the generates source/resource code.

It will definetly help, if you have the Motif/Xt/X11 manuals.

In order for the code to be generated in the correct place and with the
correct cflags/includes/libs you must select the Option Editor from the
main menu and the the code generation option, before you start generating
code. Otherwise the code would be generated into the current directory.

Have fun playing with it.



The source code is available from public.x.org in /contrib/devel_tools/

  as Guide.0.4.tar.gz
  
  when uncompressed and untarred then following directory structure appears:
  
  Guide.0.4/src         <- all source code (C and C++)
           /src/project <- this is where the tool will put generated code
             
  The fun part is compiling this beast. You will most likely need gcc 2.7.2
with the template patch and the 2.7.2 libg++ library etc...

I haven't had time to play with Gnu's configure utility so in order to
compile you need to edit the Makefile (only one) to reflect your systems
library and include file locations. (should be straight forward)

PLEASE DON'T ASK ME ABOUT OTHER COMPILERS! I AM AS CLUELESS AS YOU ! 

   .    _  .     _____________
   |\_|/__/|    /             \
  / / \/ \  \  / Happy! Happy! \
 /__|O||O|__ \ \   Joy! Joy!   /
|/_ \_/\_/ _\ | \  ___________/
| | (____) | ||  |/
\/\___/\__/  // _/
(_/         ||
 |          ||\
  \        //_/
   \______//
  __|| __||
 (____(____) 

(Well at least I will pretend to be clueless)


Anyone willing to write extensions for this beast is welcome to do so, I think
I will need a font editor, a pixmap editor, some kind of color selector...

This may be an awsome college/gradute/undergradute project :-D (...me rolling
on the ground laughing histerically ...)

Anyway, I won't refuse anyones help.



Olaf



      _____                         .     .
     '    \\                  .                .                      |>>
         O//             .                        .                   |
        \_\          .                              .                 |
        | |      .                                   .    .  .        |
       /  |  .            Olaf Becker                 . .      .      |
      /  .|           obecker@mprgate.ca               .        ...o  |

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