Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

It is time to consider dropping the dependence
and development in X11 in favor of more modern
cross-platform GUI environments.  Of course
Java is one that comes to mind.  Python with
appropriate add-ons is yet another.

On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 00:30 +0200, Benjamin Franksen wrote:

On Thursday 31 August 2006 20:24, Andrew Johnson wrote:

Since a signficant number of EPICS extensions (ALH, DM2K, EDM, MEDM,
Probe, StripTool) make use of Motif, I think it's worthwhile
repeating

this news item from Linux Weekly News here:

Fedora Core to drop openmotif [Distributions] Posted Aug 31, 2006
16:13 UTC (Thu) by corbet

It's official: Fedora Core 6 will not include the openmotif
library, which has a non-free license. The library will be removed
prior to the October 2 development freeze. As a result, a number of
packages using openmotif (including cmucl, ddd, nedit, and xpdf)
will break; they, too, will be removed if they cannot be shifted
over to lesstif in the next month.

Full Story at http://lwn.net/Articles/197744/

This won't prevent OpenMotif from being installed on FC6 machines,
but it will involve extra work.  FC6 will include LesTif, but that's
not 100% compatible with the original, and I know we had problems
with it before OpenMotif came out.

I would not recommend using LessTif for anything that should work reliably and emphatically not as a replacement in EPICS applications that are based on (Open)Motif.

One example: my favourite text editor 'NEdit', an otherwise extremely stable and actively maintained program, is almost completely unusable with LessTif. The developers insist that this is not their fault: LessTif simply remains bug ridden, despite several reports, some of them _years_ ago. It just seems that LessTif doesn't attract enough active developers to really get rid of these problems.

OTOH, I have to warn that switching from Motif to a completely different GUI library, such as GTK or Qt (as suggested by Kay), or possibly to some portable library such as wxWindows, in practice means a complete rewrite, at least of the GUI part of the app. This is a _considerable_ effort. New applications are, of course, a different matter, as is the case where a rewrite is planned anyway.

The EPICS EXTENSIONS have lasted a very long time and we all enjoy them.

So, what is next?  Yes, maybe a re-write is in order for the future
longevity and maintainability. :)

The activity from the Control Systems Studio team has gotten a start
down the path.

Just my 2c.
Ben

Replies:

Re: Fedora Core 6 to drop OpenMotif Eric Norum

References:

Fedora Core 6 to drop OpenMotif Andrew Johnson

Re: Fedora Core 6 to drop OpenMotif Benjamin Franksen

Re: Fedora Core 6 to drop OpenMotif Ernest L. Williams Jr.

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