xtop.exe ?

[DanielSantos]

Hifolks....

Well, I know that there are a lot oftitans here that are using Pro/E since its first releases.... many of you are members of TCs and have direct contatc with PTC developers, managers and such...

I have a doubt regarding the name of the executable that runs Pro/E.. xtop.exe

Although there is a proe.exe as well, xtop.exe is the main oneI guess... So I wonder where the name xtop.exe cames from...why this name?

Does anybody knows that?

Regards,

Daniel Santos - Sr. NC Programmer / CAM Support

Liebherr Aerospace Brasil

[doakes]

Daniel,

ProE was originally developed on VAX/VMS and simultaneously ported to Unix which, I believe, was the largest distribution platform for ProE originally. In Unix the windowing system is known as XWindows (which I believe Microsoft somehow contributed to - memory really weak on that point). When ProE was later made available on PC/Windows, PTC developed (or purchased?) their own proprietary XWindow subsystem for windows that translated the XWindow system calls to Windows system calls to prevent the need for re-writing all of their graphics calls. I'm guessing on this because at the same timeframe there was another company (Hummingbird) that provided a product (Exceed) for doing the XWindow to Window system call translation and their process showed up as xtop in the windows process list (other Unix-based CAD systems used Exceed). I'm doing alot of "supposing" or guessing but I doubt I'm too far off the mark (I'd say remembering but the memory is too vague to claim that).

So on a purely hypothetical guess or speculation, xtop comes from XWindows (ie. the top XWindow process). Probably just never changed the name once they, PTC, did a REAL port to windows, which I'm assuming they have done.

With this much speculation, I'm sure these guesses will be esconced on the Internet as pure and accurate historical fact, quoted to future generations as what really happened. ;-> Ahhh, the Internet, where the past can be as fluid as the future.

Best regards,

[gchampoux]

In short, this is the top-level process for Pro/E. The X stands for X Windows, which was the first windowing system that PTC supported. Like many vendors that port their programs to Windows (or any other platform)the file names are rarely changed, to ensure that compile/build procedures don't break.

[DanielSantos]

Hi David,

A colleague here in Brazil, Mario Secco dropped me a line after my post saying something similar. I´m glad that you both could share this excelent explanation with us...Unfortunately I never had a chance to use PTC products in other OS than Windows, so the more I use it the more I feels that I missed the best part of the history...

Anyway, now we are here, trying to be part of history of each other by helping each other. And that is also amazing. I´m glad that I can be part of it anyway... 😆

My sincere thank you for sharing this with us,

Daniel

Regards,

Daniel Santos - Sr. NC Programmer / CAM Support

Liebherr Aerospace Brasil