Devguide, GMF, and GUIL

Devguide is a development tool that enables you to create and test user interfaces without writing any code.

Devguide produces GIL files that you can convert into Motif C code with the utility, gmf, or into UIL with the utility, guil.

Names and Terminology

The word "Guide" in the full name, "OpenWindows Developer's Guide," is an acronym for Graphical User Interface Design Editor. The abbreviated name, "Devguide," refers to the graphical interface tool you use to develop the user interface.

The term gmf refers to the utility that takes the GIL file produced by Devguide to produce Motif source code for your user interface. This code is referred to as the UI (user interface) code, which contrasts with the application code.

Installation and Environment Setting for Devguide, GMF, and GUIL

To install Devguide and the gmf and guil utilities, follow the instructions in the Software Developer Kit Installation Guide. See the OpenWindows Developer's Guide: User's Guide for a more complete discussion of the process of setting environment variables.

Setting Environment Variables for GUIDEUTILHOME

By default, the SUNWgmfu package is installed in the directory, /opt/SUNWgmfu. Wherever SUNWgmfu is installed, the GUIDEUTILHOME directory should be set to the directory where the package is stored. For example, if the package were installed in /export/home/SUNWgmfu, then:

for C shell:

% setenv GUIDEUTILHOME /export/home/SUNWgmfu

for Bourne shell:

$ GUIDEUTILHOME=/export/home/SUNWgmfu
$ export GUIDEUTILHOME

If you want to access gmf and guil from anywhere, GUIDEUTILHOME needs to be set and the PATH environment variable needs to have GUIDEUTILHOME/bin in it.

For access to the gmf and guil man pages, MANPATH needs to have GUIDEUTILHOME/man in it.

Setting Environment Variables for MOTIFHOME

In addition to setting the variable for GUIDEUTILHOME, you should set MOTIFHOME to the location where Motif is installed

(/usr/opt/SUNWmotif, for example).

If you are using a non-Sun version of Motif, you may have to edit the Makefile to change -I$MOTIFHOME/include to -I$MOTIFHOME/usr/include and to change -L$MOTIFHOME/lib to -L$MOTIFHOME/usr/lib.

How you interact with Devguide and GMF

The basic interaction with Devguide is very simple. When you use Devguide to develop your user interface with the OPEN LOOK look and feel by dragging and positioning glyphs on interface windows, Devguide saves a description of the interface in a GIL file. This process is explained in detail in the OpenWindows Developer's Guide: User's Guide.

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Note - To see the interface with the Motif look and feel, you have to compile the generated code.

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To create Motif C code from a GIL file, run the gmf utility on the GIL file, shown below as <fn>.G. The .G suffix is the standard suffix for GIL files. gmf produces the four files shown in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1

gmf also automatically generates a program Makefile.

Devguide allows you to organize several GIL files into projects. Devguide saves projects in files that have a .P extension. When you run gmf on a project file, it generates the files shown in Figure 1-1 for each .G file in the project. It also generates <projectname>.c and <projectname>.h files.

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Note - gmf-generated code is identical to handwritten Motif code; you can use gmf's output to learn Motif.

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