Re: RIET USERS: Multiple OS GUI C++ Tools

Alan Hewat, ILL Grenoble ( (no email) )
Mon, 16 Feb 1998 10:26:39 +0200

L.M.D.Cranswick@dl.ac.uk (L. Cranswick) wrote 15 Feb 1998:

>For those who may be thinking of developing
>GUIs for their code but want it to run on Multiple
>operating system - including MS-Windows(?).

This appears a little far from Rietveld, but I will try to connect -
at the risk of upsetting Juan, Bob et al. if not Lachlan.

The original Rietveld program was well suited to use with a graphic
user interface, because it had a consistent packaged input (a deck
of cards :-). With such a structure, the user can fill in a GUI form,
select some options etc and then send this packaged input to the
program, which grinds away and then sends a package of results
(it was called a print-out :-) back to the user to be displayed.

Modern programs tend to use command-line input - questions
and answers, with the next question often depending on the previous
answer. This makes it much more difficult to construct a graphic
user interface, especially if you want it to be system independent.
(because you cannot readily seperate the interface from the rest).

But assuming that you have gone back and restructured your old
Fortran code so that it is more "object oriented", there are a couple
of easier alternatives to using C++ to construct GUI's - apart from
MS Visual Basic, which of course will only ever work with MS Win.

* tcl/tk is the popular GUI scripting language for Unix (and Windows).

* A WWW interface is guaranteed to work on any system.
See http://www.ill.fr/dif/tutorial.html for a trivial cook-book
example, and http://barns.ill.fr/ for something more ambitious.

* MetaCard has the advantage that the interface can be constructed
graphically just by cutting and pasting buttons. The exact same file
will produce a Win-95 interface or a Unix interface, with automatic
recognition of the operating system: see http://www.metacard.com/

I would like to see some-one produce a Metacard GUI for Rietveld.

Alan Hewat, ILL Grenoble, FRANCE <hewat@ill.fr> tel (33) 4.76.20.72.13
ftp://ftp.ill.fr/pub/dif fax (33) 4.76.48.39.06 http://www.ill.fr/dif/