7.0179 R: Software Tools (1/31)
Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Fri, 10 Sep 1993 16:09:15 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 7, No. 0179. Friday, 10 Sep 1993.
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 93 13:51:29 -0400
From: tom@sailfish.cse.fau.edu (Tom Horton)
Subject: Re: 7.0169 Software Tools
George McClintock <mcc@timessqr.gc.cuny.edu> responded to a query
about software tools for building software with good user interfaces.
He mentioned Visual Basic or Visual C/C++ for the PC and X Windows for
UNIX.
There are now a number of impressive tools (i.e. software to help you build
software) for graphical user interface (GUI) development. Most of these
work in only one hardware/operating-system environment (e.g. Visual C++
works on for Windows on PCs or NT). But some are designed to allow you to
move your application between platforms without any changes.
These include at least commerical tool (from a company called XVT) and also
a free one (SUIT from the Univ. of Virginia). These support Windows, Mac,
UNIX (at least Motif), and a number of others. So someone can create an
application on, say, the PC and then simply recompile the program on any of
these other platforms and have a new version that uses the natural GUI of
that system. (Of course, you have to have the libraries for each system
you wish to recompile on.)
I'd strongly urge anyone creating software for use by humanists to consider
using one of these tools to build an application that can be used on more
than one platform. Or at the very least one should insure that the system
is written in a portable language (like C) and that the user-interface is
as "separate" from the main functionality of the system as possible.
Tom
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Thomas B. Horton, Assistant Professor
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL 33431 USA Phone: 407/367-2674 FAX: 407/367-2800
Internet: tom@cse.fau.edu Bitnet: HortonT@fauvax