RE: Motif or Gtk.

["merry::satchell"@hermes.dra.hmg.gb]

Arguing about the merits of different widget sets is just as useful as arguing
about the merits of different languages. It is also probably off list, except
in so far as it effects their guile bindings. I have used both widget sets, 
Motif more than Gtk, and would summarise my position as follows.

1) If starting a new project from scratch, I would chose Gtk.

Gtk is already a more complete set of widgets.

Gtk does not use the inefficient Xt resource mechanism; instead (in
Xt/Motif language) convenience functions are used for everything.

It seems to be about the same amount of work to write a custom widget
for either system, although I have only done four Xt ones and one Gtk widget.

I think the look of the Gtk widgets is very smart. Most important reason :-)

guile-gtk exists, and I think is reasonably complete although I have not used
it. I do not know about the status of its thread support. Marius ?

2) If I was porting an existing Motif based project, I would probably stick
with Motif. gtk is different all the way through, it's not Xt based, and you 
can't (easily) mix them. If you have something which has most of its code
involved in its gui, maybe with custom widgets, then adding guile, and doing
some or all of the widget creation from the scheme level is bearable. If you
ported it to gtk it would be an almost total rewrite.

If you really needed guile threads co-existing with the gui, (and if guile-gtk
does not have this already), then I have made this work for xguile, by hacking
the Xt event loop. 

In a sentence, gtk for new apps, but let us still provide support for old 
Motif ones.

Julian Satchell
(the xguile bindings for Motif were my fault)
<satchell@dera.gov.uk>