Subject: Please explain Motif issues (was: StarOf

From: [email-masked] (Ninoles, Fabien: DGSE)
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 12:13:21 -0400

<SNAP ON>

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From:  James A. Robinson[SMTP:[email-masked]]
Sent:  Wednesday, August 21, 1996 2:48 AM
To:  Christopher R. Hertel
Cc:  debian-user
Subject:  Re: Please explain Motif issues (was: StarOffice under Debian)

> Can someone point me toward the FAQ or HOWTO that will explain the
> issues with Motif?  Why is Motif hard to come by and what is Lesstif?

Motif is a set of "proprietary" libraries licensed by OSF.  So it
costs money to get them.  I've bought them for $99.00 at InfoMagic
(http://www.infomagic.com), but I've heard some people quote and
amazingly low price of $40.00.  Normally one sees them going for
$200.00 or so.

Lesstif is an attempt to duplicate the API of Motif, without using the
proprietary source code.  They want to allow anybody to compile and
run Motif programs using Lesstif.  Lesstif is free, and is put out by
the Hungry Programmers (http://www.hungry.com).  As far as I can tell,
it is still very unstable, and not usable for something like
StarOffice.  But others who have actually used it should speak up.

Jim

<SNAP OFF>

That's the price for the shared libraries distributions
from OSF Motif... You mostly got more with the Infomagic
CD :) There're some really low price if you buy from
OSF Direct Office but I don't understand nothing about
their licences. Whatever, this is the address :

    http://www.osf.org/motif/

But thanks for the lesstif... it's the first time, I was
really happy to find this version of LaserChess!

Fab.