Lesstif FAQ
About this FAQ
This article contains the answers to some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
often seen in the Lesstif mailing list and posted to comp.window.x.motif.
It is posted to help reduce volume in the Lesstif mailing list and to
provide hard-to-find information of general interest.
Please redistribute this article!
This article includes answers to the following questions, which are loosely
grouped into categories. Questions marked with a + indicate questions new to
this issue; those with significant changes of content since the last issue are
marked by !:
Contents
TOPIC: Lesstif General Information
1.0 What is Lesstif
Lesstif is a API compatible clone of the Motif toolkit. Currently
Lesstif is partially implemented with most of the API in place. Saying
this a lot of the internal functionality is still missing.
The primary objectives have been to develop the widget code of the
Lesstif Toolkit.
1.1 Where can I get Lesstif
Get it from the Lesstif Home Page at...
http://www.hungry.com/products/lesstif/
or FTP it from ...
ftp://ftp.hungry.com/pub/hungry/lesstif
The hungry programmers and a few Internet based individuals
- Chris Toshok
- Danny Backx
- Mitch Miers
- Matt Crosby
- Paul Hoad
- Jim Hunt
- Bernd Wiserner Hunt
This table has been dropped as it is out of date
Keeping a list of developers for each widget is not really possible
mainly because those people contributing to each widget is large
and they change so much. Therefore we are not maintaining a list
of developers against widget.
Well probably not yet but in time yes. You should for now be able to
compile your code but whether it runs is another matter...
Yes this is the first major step. We must have a Motif1.2 Compliant
library first. All work should be concentrated on this step further
expansion will be nice in the future but adding in Motif2.0 features
should be left, please concentrate on Motif1.2 for now we need the help
here.
Yes but this is obviously still on the wish list. Our main concern is
getting Motif1.2 Complaint code first.
Dream time now... Full CDE compliance in the public domain. Window Manager,
File and Print Managers. Session Manager, Calendar, Diary, Clock,
Virtual Desktops,etc.... `I have a dream`
No. Shame though any offers?
Yes mainly for Developers though at the moment. Please no flooding
with "When will Lesstif compile my app?" questions.
Lesstif now has a mailing list. To subscribe, send a message whose body (not subject line) says:
subscribe lesstif
to majordomo@hungry.com.
Yes this is probably the best thing to read if your just browsing.
Lesstif now has a mailing list digest. To subscribe, send a message whose body
(not subject line) says:
subscribe lesstif-digest
to majordomo@hungry.com
No not as far as I am aware just yet.
LessDox is the shortened version of the Lesstif Documentation Project.
any previous reference to LDP is now dropped because of the conflict with
the Linux Development project.
Currently you can obtain LessDox from the lesstif URL.
http://www.cs.uidaho.edu/hungry/microshaft/lesstif/LDP/Lesstif.html
A printed version of LessDox might become available soon depending
upon demand. This will be available from
Dr Paul Hoad
TOPIC: Lesstif Installation
Current known platforms include.
- HP715 HP-UX 9.05a X11R5
- IBMRS6000 AIX 3.2.5 X11R5
- Linux 1.1.18 XFree 2.1 X11R5
- FreeBSD
- Irix 5.2(Indy)
Why not mail me if yours is not here
Send Mail tophoad@madge1.dev.madge.com
No...
Please do not ask for one. There is no intention of producing pre-built
libraries until the Lesstif version is stable and near completion.
Yes at the moment sorry but you do. My personal opinion is that
you should be using it anyway if your using X11.
Updated for version 0.1a onwards...
No you do not now as Lesstif now comes with a configure script instead.
In fact you can not use xmkmf.
Update for version 0.3
Dr Paul Hoad has made an Imakefile patch for Lesstif allowing Imakefiles
to be overlayed ontop of Lesstif. This is for those people for who
a) The configure script fails.
b) Prefer to use imakefiles.
Yes you can on some platforms.
Yes you can on all tested platforms.
A lot of people have been inquiring about linking
with lesstif after getting _XmuEditRecCheckMessages as
an undefined symbol.
This is because after all the silly questions I have
seen in the Motif newsgroups about getting Motif to
respond to editres, I went ahead and ahead editres support
in the Lesstif library itself, so you no longer need to do
it yourself.
The only problem is that you must link with -lXmu now.
The following link line probably works for Motif (barring any
funny vendor stuff)
-lXm -lXt -lX11
While the following is needed for Lesstif
-lXm -lXmu -lXt -lX11
Some vendors (HP comes to mind) muck around with some internal Xt and Xmu
stuff and so you might have to end up swapping the order of -lXt and -lXmu
-- do this if you get undefined symbols from the Lesstif link line above.
Sooner or later, I will probably just include the _XEditResCheckMessages
function in Lesstif, and the -lXmu will go away, but for now it is required.
Lesstif is now using the GNU configure system so all you need to
do is type
configure
followed by
make.
Update for version 0.3
If your using the Imakefile patchs then you will need to type
xmkmf -a
followed by
make
TOPIC: Lesstif Development Progress
From Chris:...
Hmm.. I would not suggest using Lesstif yet for any serious Motif
development (unless you are planning to contribute -- hint hint :) I would
be interested to know which contrib applications did not compile or
link with lesstif. Could you possibly send me the compiler/linker
output?
The development of Lesstif is currently focused on getting the core
functionality into the Motif 1.2 widgets. UIL/Mrm and a window
manager will probably come a little later. The code is
changing/maturing rapidly, with releases being made every week (on
Monday morning). After everything is done with 1.2, we will probably
start looking at 2.0 functionality and some extensions that would be
nice to have...
So far, most of the primitive widgets work in some form or another.
Many of the manager widgets are working, and the others are being
worked on actively. Things like traversal and focus handling might
take a bit longer, since they are not really documented all that well
anywhere -- well, the functions are documented, but the underlying
mechanism is not described in any great detail. Menu handling is
maturing, and is beginning to work better. Gadget handling should be
greatly improved in the next release. In short, if something does not
work quite right, wait a few weeks :) I am hoping to get a certified
"usable" release that I can have no problem saying "go ahead and use
this for serious development" in a few months.
Yes the Lesstif Documentation Project (Lessdox)
check out the LessDox home page at:
http://www.hungry.com/products/lesstif/Lessdox/Lesstif.html
About Once a week usually Monday so Chris needs to receive patches
before then for them to make the release.
Bug reports are very welcome, and I will do my best to get the fixes out as quick as
possible. Please send them to lesstif@hungry.com, and include the distribution that
you are using (e.g, release-0.50). This last bit is extremely important, since the source is continuously being updated.
Well very little I should think. Last I heard Mosaic-2.5b4 did
compile but would not run. I heard that PhaserChess works but
as far as I am aware little else is running. There are a whole
load of tests though in the testXm directory that do work.
The _Xm* functions seem to be undocumented in Motif1.2 therefore we will
make every effort to implement the functions as best we can.
The _Xm functions are implemented in the Internal
Functions section of the Lesstif Documentation project.
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Copyright© 1995 Lesstif Document Project.