Re: Motif or GNOME? (semi-repost)

[Jonathan Belson <jon@dookie.demon.co.uk>]

Hiya


>Hi, I tried to ask this earlier but got my terminology mixed up and I 
>don't think my question made sense. I'll try again.

I was scratching my head when I read it ;^)

>I need to develop an app for analyzing data and graphically (3D)
>displaying results, preferrably with C++, X Windows, and OpenGL.
>
>I need to be able to move my development efforts, and the app itself, to
>as many platforms as possible as I'll be moving and don't know what kind of
>platform will be at my next locale.

If you want your application to portable to arbitrary platforms, you'll
have to jump through extra hoops to make sure the main program is
logically independent of the display routines.  I'm doing something
similar with my BeOS app 'Landscape' as I port it to X/KDE - I have
a base class for eg. rendering the terrain view, and from it and the
OS window class I inherit the final class:

class base_render_window {
    virtual void render_stuff();
};


For BeOS:

class render_window : public BWindow, base_render_window {

    virtual void render_stuff() {
        beos_specific_setup();
        base_render_window::render_stuff();
    }

};


For KDE:

class render_window : public KMainWindow, base_render_window {

    virtual void render_stuff() {
        kde_specific_setup();
        base_render_window::render_stuff();
    }

};


If you're only really interested in porting to Windows and X
then either QT or GTK should do, although AIUI the Windows QT
port is considerably more stable than the Windows GTK one.

>Second priority is speed, as it will be extremely computational- and
>diskI/O- intensive.

If the display isn't required to be super fast (ie. it's not a video
game) then you shouldn't have too many problems.

>Should I use Motif, or the newer GNOME (or KDE)?

I'd suggest QT/KDE, since QT is designed from the ground up as an
object-oriented API.  (Opinions do differ).


--
C-YA
Jon

<http://www.dookie.demon.co.uk>