There seems to be a great deal of confusion, especially within Sun, about
whether or not drag and drop and selections are implemented with ToolTalk
in OpenWindows 3.0. From the replies I received, I now strongly believe
that the answer is no.
ToolTalk is used, however, for attachments on the mailtool and possibly
some binder-related things.
Regarding my more general questions about ToolTalk and the Link Manager,
the replies I received were interesting and enlightening. Thanks to
all who responded. Below I enclose the portions of those messages that
deal with the general future of ToolTalk and the Link Manager.
On a related topic, it was brought to my attention by one of my co-workers
that an important piece of documentation is missing from the OpenWindows
Programmer's docs. Nowhere in the documentation is there any mention of
the API for the classing engine functions which seem to be essential to using
ToolTalk effectively. There is a rumor of a "Desktop Integration Guide",
which contains the documentation for this, which is not included in the
OW3 documentation. There is also a directory under the OpenWindows tree
called "dig_examples", supposedly a reference to this guide. Does anyone
know more about this?
-ams
From: matt@centerline.com
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 15:36:51 EST
To: steele@icd.teradyne.com
Subject: Re: ToolTalk and Link Manager?
Newsgroups: comp.windows.open-look,comp.sys.sun.apps
Some of this is speculation -- albeit well-informed speculation -- on
my part.
In comp.windows.open-look you write:
>My 3.0-beta distribution of OpenWindows had a whole bunch of stuff on
>the "Link Manager". The final release of 3.0 has no mention of it.
>Does anyone know what happened to it?
Documentation for it got dropped from the OWN 3.0 FCS release because
the underlying ToolTalk and link service stuff wasn't really ready for
general use. Expect to see it return in Solaris 2.0, with a vengeance.
>Also, I've noticed the recent SunFlash list postings on ToolTalk being
>accepted by a number of vendors, etc. Is ToolTalk really becoming an
>open systems standard? Are there any competing products/protocols?
ToolTalk is basically an architecture for sending messages between
cooperating programs and a message server program that sends such msgs
on behalf of ToolTalk-aware clients. In this regard it serves the same
function as the SoftBench Broadcast Message Server from HP.
Howver, HP hasn't really done a good job of separating the message server
from the tools that use it and the particular messages spoken by those
tools. Sun is positioning ToolTalk as an application-independent piece
of technology -- essentially a bit of programming infrastructure.
A large number of CASE and CAD vendors have announced intent to support
the ToolTalk effort by making their systems ToolTalk-aware. In fact,
there are two software vendor consortia (the CAD Framework Initiative
and the CASE Message Alliance) that are working to define standard sets
of ToolTalk messages that can be used to communicate among and between
various CAD and CASE tools.
Many of these same vendors have announced intent to support Softbench
and the SoftBench BMS as well. In a sense ToolTalk and Softbench are
competitors in the architecture/frameworks world, but most vendors seem
to be trying to support both rather than choose between them.
>Where exactly does ToolTalk fit into the big picture of distributed
>computing? Any why is it being bundled with the window system instead
>of the operating system?
It was bundled with OWN3.0 because certain components of DeskSet 3.0
(like attachments in mailtool and the binder used with filemgr) require
it. When it didn't turn out to be ready for public consumption, it
appears that Sun chose to ship a mostly-undocumented version for use by
DeskSet, and to update/document it in Solaris 2.0
>Final point of curiosity: Is the selection and drag-n-drop stuff in
>OW3.0 implemented using tooltalk? If not, where is it implemented?
>In the X server? (Please say no.) In the "Drag Drop Site Manager"
>(dsdm)? The internal workings of some of this stuff is not clear to
>me.
It was originally supposed to be implemented using ToolTalk, but that
didn't happen (although there's a popular misconception that it did,
because Sun talked so much about doing it before they actually shipped).
My (potentially flawed) understanding is that drag-and-drop in OWN 3.0
is implemented by the toolkits (XView, tnt, and OLIT), which use the
standard mechanisms of properties and ClientMessages on windows to
communicate drag-and-drop info.
They also interact with dsdm, which maintains a list of valid drop-sites
so that toolkits can inquire about whether the pointer is over a drop
site. This seems to be mostly an efficiency hack, so that the client
doing the drag can find out if it has a legal drop site without relying
on swapping in the target application and having it answer a query.
In the next release of OWN, this is all supposed to get replaced by
ToolTalk messages, as originally planned.
-- Matt Landau Waiting for a flash of enlightenment matt@centerline.com in all this blood and thunderDate: Sun, 23 Feb 92 07:22:32 PST From: Hank Shiffman <Hank.Shiffman@Eng.Sun.COM> To: steele@icd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: ToolTalk and Link Manager? Newsgroups: comp.windows.open-look,comp.sys.sun.apps Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
In article <NEPTUNE.92Feb22134800@fenchurch.mit.edu> you write: > >My 3.0-beta distribution of OpenWindows had a whole bunch of stuff on >the "Link Manager". The final release of 3.0 has no mention of it. >Does anyone know what happened to it?
I believe it was decided that more testing was needed, both from a feature/capability standpoint and a quality one, before Link Manager could go out the door.
>Also, I've noticed the recent SunFlash list postings on ToolTalk being >accepted by a number of vendors, etc. Is ToolTalk really becoming an >open systems standard? Are there any competing products/protocols? >Where exactly does ToolTalk fit into the big picture of distributed >computing? Any why is it being bundled with the window system instead >of the operating system?
Tooltalk was bundled with Open Windows 3.0 because OW depends on it. It wasn't bundled with the OS because there wasn't a new major release of the OS ready to go. When Solaris 2.0 ships you'll find Tooltalk (and Open Windows 3.0.x) as part of the package.
Will Tooltalk become a standard? Too soon to tell, although SunSoft is making every effort to gain a high level of acceptance. Are there competitive packages? HP's Broadcast Message Switch, the link protocol used by their Softbench product (a developer toolset), might be seen as one. However, since only Softbench customers get BMS it's not as general as Tooltalk. There are others, with which I'm less familiar.
[erroneous info about dnd and selections being done with tt removed -ed]
From: matt@centerline.com Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 09:15:52 EST To: neptune@diamond.icd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: ToolTalk and Link Manager?
> Will Tooltalk become a standard? Too soon to tell, although SunSoft > is making every effort to gain a high level of acceptance. Are there > competitive packages? HP's Broadcast Message Switch, the link > protocol used by their Softbench product (a developer toolset), might > be seen as one. However, since only Softbench customers get BMS it's > not as general as Tooltalk.
Hank is making a stretch here -- only SoftBench end users get BMS from HP, but HP will license BMS (for some suitably large fee) to other hardware and software vendors. IBM has licensed it, for example, and use it in CASE integration framework (Framework/6000 I think it's called).
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 17:56:01 PST From: Brian.Holtz@Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) To: steele@icd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: ToolTalk and Link Manager? Newsgroups: comp.windows.open-look,comp.sys.sun.apps Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
In article <NEPTUNE.92Feb22134800@fenchurch.mit.edu> you write:
>I've noticed the recent SunFlash list postings on ToolTalk being >accepted by a number of vendors, etc. Is ToolTalk really becoming an >open systems standard?
We like to think so. Silicon Graphics just licensed it. It's been demo'd on SPARC, HP, IBM, DEC, and Intergraph. SunSoft will license it to any system vendor who wants it. Call your system vendor today and ask for ToolTalk. Accept no substitutes. ;)
>Are there any competing products/protocols?
I don't know of any competing *products* that aren't niche-specific (e.g., HP's SoftBench) or functionally far inferior (e.g., System 7 AppleEvents or MicroSoft DDE). (Actually, the messaging system inside SoftBench is inferior, too, it's just not as inferior as the PC systems. ;) Then there's ISIS, which is lower-level and intended for different purposes than ToolTalk.
>Where exactly does ToolTalk fit into the big picture of distributed >computing?
ToolTalk is as far as I can see *the* tool integration product for Unix today. Soon SunSoft and others will have implementations out of systems based on the Object Management Group's Object Request Broker standard. We see ToolTalk as a way for applications to start using that futuristic kind of technology *today*.
> Any why is it being bundled with the window system instead >of the operating system?
Because some products bundled with the window system depend on ToolTalk.
>Final point of curiosity: Is the selection and drag-n-drop stuff in >OW3.0 implemented using tooltalk?
No.
>If not, where is it implemented? >In the X server? (Please say no.) In the "Drag Drop Site Manager" >(dsdm)? The internal workings of some of this stuff is not clear to >me.
Nor to me. ;) Actually, why should you care? I believe SunSoft is committed to tracking whatever X11 DnD standards emerge, and until then we will ship our own DnD stuff, and we will tell you how to use it. Ya can't ask for much more than that. -- Brian Holtz
>From Brian.Holtz@Eng.Sun.COM Tue Feb 25 11:57:09 1992 Date: Tue, 25 Feb 92 08:47:06 PST From: Brian.Holtz@Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) To: neptune@diamond.icd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: ToolTalk and Link Manager? Content-Length: 1621
> There seems to be a lot of confusion about whether > or not the dnd and selection stuff in OW3 is implemented with ToolTalk or > not. In fact, another response I received from Hank Shiffman > <Hank.Shiffman@Eng.Sun.COM> said the exact opposite.
He might be thinking of ttdnd.a, which is a library that lets two DnD clients use TT to actually exchange their data. I don't think any of our bundled tools use this data-transfer method as the default method. Any IPC mechanism could do the same thing; e.g., you could set up a socket for the data transfer. The important thing is that the handshake and setup is done without using ToolTalk.
I just confirmed this by DnD'ing some text between this mailtool compose window and a cmdtool. The DnD worked, but no ttsession is running or was started. Nothing in ToolTalk can happen without a ttsession being involved.
> I understand that > the intention was to use ToolTalk for the dnd and selection stuff and that > it was changed at the last minute.
I don't know if that intention was entertained, but I never heard about it, and given the sluggishness of the release process, I don't think a change that major could have happened at the "last minute".
> 2) Both dnd and cut/paste are _significantly_ slower in OW3 than in OW2 > and I'd like to know why.
I've heard this, too, and I've heard speculation as to why that is, but I'm not in the Windows group and I really don't know, so I won't repeat the speculation. But I can guarantee you it has nothing to do with ToolTalk.
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 92 13:19:11 EST From: stras@sunrock.East.Sun.COM (Jim Strasenburgh {Systems Eng} Sun Rochester) To: steele@icd.teradyne.com Subject: Re: ToolTalk and Link Manager?
Tooltalk is Sun's first implementation toward a fully distributed object environment based on a government requirement by the OMG (Office Management Group).
I see this technology going much the same way as X is today - ie - enough leeway for some flavors/implementations yet all interoperable between venders.
Should be something that you will definitely want to track over the next 1-2 years. Tooltalk will continue to evolve towards something called DOMF (Distributed Objects Management Facility) which is a standard (like X in the workstation/corporate computing world). In a sense DOMF is analogous to theIntrinsics (Xt) layer - where other vendors will write widget libraries, in this case you will be writing objects. Sun's "widget set" for the DOMF is called DOE. Again, the key is that many vendors have agreed to DOMF as the object/network interface layer which allows objects to interoperate between different vendors platforms.
[erroneous information about dnd and selections implemented with tt removed]
Hope this helps,
STRAS
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