Eric writes:
> Can anyone provide feedback on the Motif product available on the 3k?
>
> Better yet, can anyone describe their use of Motif on the 3k? (I remember a
> post once that the Boeing? people had 3k Motif apps running.)
 
Well, I was *the* beta test site for Motif/XL when it came out a
few years ago. the following comments are based on that experience,
and things may have changed since that time (then again, since there
haven't been many users of the product, things might *not* have
changed).
 
>  a) How does the 3k Motif logon work?
 
Well, Motif doesn't have any concept of a login really. Since MPE
does not support running a windows manager (like Motif's mwm or
vuewm for example) you will be using either a workstation or an
X Terminal connected to some sort of unix system as your front
end. The login from this 'workstation' to the 3000 would have the
same options as if Motif were not involved (vt3k, telnet (dtc or
when inbound telnet is available), etc.).
 
You don't *need* any login to the 3000 for the workstation. You just
need to have the Motif application "client" program started on the
3000 somehow with the DISPLAY ci variable set to point to the name
or IP address of the "server" (the worksation), and the workstation
needs to have the secirity of its X server set to allow the 3000
to throw windows at it.
 
If you are thinking about an X terminal window running, say, a
vplus application or something on the 3000, then you probably
don't want/need Motif on the 3000. For this to even involve the
3000 at all, you would need to have xterm or hpterm or a similar
program running on the 3000. I don't think HP provides an X based
terminal program for the 3000, and porting one would be rather
difficult until we get pty support on the 3000.
 
To get an X window to show a terminal logged onto a 3000, today
you would need to run a terminal program on a unix system that
would be talking X to your display, and VT (or whatever) to the
3000. There would be no X/Motif traffic going to the 3000.
 
>  b) What language do I use? ('c' I suspect)
 
You use C, yes.
 
>  c) Performance opinions (reviews)?
 
Watch out for fancy Motif widgets and other things that enable
mouse tracking events. When this gets turned on, every motion of
the mouse over a window that is coming from the 3000 will spam
the 3000 with network packets, which is a Bad Thing(tm).
 
Performance is really not bad for less intensive applications. An
X based user will probably use up significantly more resources
than a terminal (or VT) based user though.
 
As I recall, you were required to statically link ~12000 sectors of
Motif and X code into every application, so if you want to have lots
of programs, then memory becomes an issue. They may have fixed this
now that 5.0 supports shared global data, but I don't know how much
work has gone into the product lately.
 
>  Any simple Motif application source welcome.  I'd sure like to see an
> existing application to model to setup a demo.
 
I was able to compile a lot of public domain X programs and run them
on the 3000. At that time most of the interesting stuff required the
Athena widgets, which HP never provides with their X distribution,
so most of what I played with wasn't very fancy stuff (xasteroids
runs amazingly well).
 
G.