IST offers a unique combination of migration tools and services that
provide a complete, fast and cost-effective migration path for moving
your C/C++ and UIL based Motif application to Qt. Our automated process completes
a migration in a fraction of the time it would take to re-code your
application from the ground up or convert manually.
The Motif to Qt Migration process
When porting a Motif based application to Qt there are essentially two
areas that need to be addressed:
Conversion of the User Interface design
This stage involves converting the "front-end" code that builds and
displays the user interface for the application to Qt. Typically, this
part of the application will either have been designed using a Motif GUI
Builder or coded by hand using C, C++ or UIL.
To address this stage of the process our X-Designer product is used to
translate the Motif GUI into an intermediate XML format. If the Motif
application was developed in UIL or using a Motif GUI Builder these GUI
files can be automatically converted into XML format using
X-Designer's
import filters. In cases where the GUI was hand coded using C or C++
X-Designer's unique XD/Capture utility is used to capture the GUI design
from the running application without the need to access the source code.
After conversion the intermediate XML format is further translated to Qt
Designer's .ui save file format. This phase of the process also performs
all the necessary mappings from the Motif widgets and dialog layouts to
Qt specific equivalents.
Conversion of GUI toolkit API calls in the back end
code
In addition to the "front end" GUI design code there are also
significant amounts of GUI toolkit specific code embedded in
the "back
end" application code. This is the code that brings the user interface
to life and controls the interaction between the user and the application
logic. These API calls perform such tasks as setting and getting
properties of GUI components, responding to user events and performing
graphics drawing. In a Motif based application all of this code is
specific to the Motif toolkit and needs to be converted to the
appropriate API calls for Qt.
To accelerate this phase of the conversion process IST has developed a
suite of in-house migration tools that allow us to automatically identify
and rewrite the GUI toolkit dependent code in the backend code base. This
context sensitive translation process automatically converts X/Motif API
calls to Qt equivalents significantly reducing the time required to
complete even the most complex migration. This migration technology is
scalable to handle large code bases across large numbers of files.
Finding out more
Alternatively email
us at
migration@ist.co.uk
to find out more about our Motif to Qt
Migration solution or to discuss your specific requirements in detail,
or call us in the US at 650 919 0200 or in
Europe at +44 845 034 0961.
