POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Re: A portable POV-Ray graphical interface? Server Time
13 Aug 2024 13:17:31 EDT (-0400)
  Re: A portable POV-Ray graphical interface? (Message 1 to 1 of 1)  
From: William D  Hayden
Subject: Re: A portable POV-Ray graphical interface?
Date: 10 Sep 1998 13:45:16
Message: <35F5C458.5D32@computek.net>
Roland,

If you are simply looking for a POV-Ray GUI for LINUX, check out:

http://www.cmpu.net.public/wdh/pov_motif

I wrote POV-Motif as a GUI front end for POV-Ray.  Solaris and LINUX
binaries and full source are available.  Freeware of course.

A portable GUI.  The holy grail of GUI development.  I've been
developing user interfaces for about 15 years.  DEC/VAX SMG calls, ANSI
escape sequences, curses, home grown libraries, OpenView, Athena, Motif,
Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Java.  I can tell you that until recently there
was no portable UI (let alone GUI) solution.  Most of the time you use
what works well on the target machine.  Java is the only real hope of a
portable GUI, and that is slim at best.  Java has many problems.  I'll
probably get roasted by Java purists for this.  Java has a number of
issues that make deploying an application a major headache.  Yes, you
can run Java applications without a web browser.  But then you have to
ship a Java Virtual Machine with the application.  The problem becomes
whose VM to ship, and will it interfere or be interfered with by some
other VM on the user's machine.  In a way the VM is an operating
system.  And so, you are right back to the same old, works on one VM but
not on another.  There is a saying about Java, write once test
everywhere.

Just my two cents.

-- 

William D. Hayden


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