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are no accepted standards for GUI development (other than perhaps the de facto Motif standard for <br />the X Window System running on workstations). <br />XVT Development Solution <br />The XVT product was evaluated by attending two XVT seminars (during which the consultant spoke <br />to current XVT users), by evaluating the XVT demo product, by reviewing XVT literature, and by <br />speaking to XVT technical personnel. XVT supports Motif on all common UNIX platforms <br />(including SGI), Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, Macintosh, and character-based screens <br />on DOS and UNIX. Approximate costs are $6300 per license for the workstation product, and $1950 <br />for PC and Macintosh products. A 50% discount can be applied to licenses above the first product <br />purchased. <br />The positive aspects of XVT are its maturity, its wide use, its reliance on native graphics toolkits, <br />and its local connection (it is a Boulder-based company). XVT also has a large number of <br />development partners and offers toolkits for various graphical displays. These toolkits may be <br />appropriate for displaying data for CRDSS (e.g., plotting data or creating reports) and will be <br />investigated further if XVT is purchased for the CRDSS. XVT will integrate with native code <br />(including existing X Window System and Motif code) such that XVT can be used to build new GUI <br />code while allowing existing Motif code to be used where appropriate; consequently, costs for GUI <br />development can be minimized. <br />The negative aspects of XVT are those associated with any portable GUI builder. The developers <br />must learn a new toolkit of graphics routines. Although XVT provides a full-featured interface for <br />building GUIs, the ?hooks? into the underlying code must be understood at a programming level and <br />therefore requires a certain amount of training and programming experience. The reliance on the <br />toolkit also means that some time will need to be allocated to determine how to integrate non-XVT <br />code with existing Motif code (where appropriate). Concerns have also been raised about XVT's <br />dependence on the native toolkits (e.g., XVT uses Motif on UNIX workstations) and that this will <br />result in a performance penalty. The consultant feels that the XVT architecture will not result in a <br />substantial performance hit and that the benefits of the XVT architecture outweigh minor <br />performance hits. <br />Galaxy <br />The Galaxy product was evaluated by attending one Galaxy seminar, by evaluating Galaxy literature, <br />and by speaking to Steve Wehrend of CADSWES. Galaxy suppo rts Motif on all common UNIX <br />platforms (including SGI), Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, Macintosh. It does not support <br />character-based GUIs. Approximate costs for licenses are $9600 per development licenses. <br />Discounts are available for 10 licenses and above. <br />On 2 June 1994, Ray Alvarado and Ross Bethel of the State, Steve Malers of RTi, Marc Baldo, Neela <br />Srinivasan, and Zaohui Hong of CSU visited C ADSWES in Boulder to speak with Steve Wehrend <br />regarding his work with Galaxy on the TERRA/PRIZM software being developed for TVA and the <br />USBR. Steve indicated that CADSWES was using the Galaxy C product because the TVA had <br />chosen that product for development and indicated that CADSWES was very happy with the Galaxy <br />product. CADSWES successfully ported their product from SunOS to Solaris with minor problems. <br />No attempt has been made to port the software to a PC environment and Steve Wehrend indicated <br />that this was not a primary goal. CADSWES uses the G++ compiler (the C++ compiler from the <br />6 <br />A275 07.28.94 1.05-15 Malers <br />