Motif 1.2.x & X11R5

[Ken Sibley]

> 
> Hi Again Guys,
> 
> At the risk of being rude 8-() I'd like to repeat my previous 
> question, which was not meant to be snotty (really!).
> 
> My question was: why is a public domain package such as GRASS
> being made dependent upon a commercial product -- Motif? Is
> CERL locking itself into a commercial product because it can make
> pretty buttons? <--- ok this bit is cheeky
> 
> I ask simply because I use products like Ximage which do not
> use motif (no fancy 3d buttons on screen), but still have all the
> menus and x functionality...and it doesn't lock the user into
> a commercial product....
> 
> Cheers,
> Chris
> 
> 

Chris,

I am not sure you have used GRASS very much as GRASS does not depend upon
Motif or even X.  XGRASS requires the motif libraries to compile.  If you
staticaly compile XGRASS with the motif libraries then you can run on 
machines without motif.  We only have one copy of motif (for sun) here
at our site just for development.  It cost about $500.  Motif libraries 
are much easier to program with than say Xlib and is more cross platform
compatible than the open windows libraries available standard on the sun.

As I was saying though you do not need motif or even X to compile and run
grass on some platforms.  We also have some 386's runnin AT&T UNIX 3.2
with specific graphics card drivers.  We use a dumb terminal for text
and the console window for graphics.

If you are on a sun machine then you can use the normal XDRIVER driver
to create your graphics window and run text in an xterm.  This only
requires Xlib to compile - not motif.

Ken Sibley
USDA-SCS
ksibley at ncg.scs.ag.gov