John,
I'll see if I can answer your questions.
The advantages to having a native GUI are three fold. First for most
people is the cost. The fastest X-servers cost a user approximately
$200, not including the cost of OpenDX. If this cost could be
eliminated, more users would be willing to start using dx. Second,
SPEED; just from our preliminary tests, a native executive is runnig
about twice as fast without the overhead of the X server. Third, the
complexity of setup for clients. It would be much easier for many
people if they could tell their clients to download OpenDX and start
running their networks. Now, there can be a lot of headaches involved
with trouble-shooting X-servers, network connections, etc.
At our company, we've looked at some alternatives to the
cross-platform GUI thing, but have decided against most of these.
Licensing issues can really get in the way of open source.
We have some time estimates that we have forecasted, but I'm afraid
that this is knowledge for public consumption. There is a lot
involved here.
Hope this helps,
David
At the OpenDX website there is some mention of interest
in having a native Windows GUI for OpenDX - but that lack
of resources is preventing this from happening. With
X servers readily available for most platforms, what
advantages are seen in doing this?
Has there been any discussion of writing a cross-platform
GUI using, e.g., Java, QT, wxWindows?
Are there any estimates for the amount of time (developer-months)
that would be required for such a task? (I suppose one could
ask - how much time went into the development of the Motif
GUI?)
Thanks....John Cary
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John R. Cary
Professor, Dept. of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0390
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ph. (303) 492-1489 fax (303) 492-0642 cell (720) 839-5997
--
.............................................................................
David L. Thompson Visualization and Imagery Solutions, Inc.
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 5515 Skyway Drive, Missoula, MT 59804
Phone : (406)257-8530
