This book describes how to write applications using the Motif toolkit from the Open Software Foundation (OSF). The Motif toolkit is based on the X Toolkit Intrinsics (Xt), which is the standard mechanism on which many of the toolkits written for the X Window System are based.
Xt provides a library of user-interface objects called widgets and gadgets, which provide a convenient interface for creating and manipulating X windows, colormaps, events, and other cosmetic attributes of the display. In short, widgets can be thought of as building blocks that the programmer uses to construct a complete application.
However, the widgets that Xt provides are generic in nature and impose no user-interface policy whatsoever. That is the job of a user-interface toolkit such as Motif. Motif provides a complete set of widgets designed to implement the application look and feel specified in the Motif Style Guide and the Motif Application Environment Specification.
The book provides a complete programmer’s guide to the Motif toolkit. While the OSF/Motif toolkit is based on Xt, the focus of the book is on Motif itself, not on the Intrinsics.Detailed information about Xt is provided by Volume 4, and references are made to that volume throughout the course of this book. You are not required to have Volume 4 in order to use this book effectively, as the books are not companion volumes, but complementary ones. However, truly robust applications require a depth of knowledge about Xt and Xlib, the layer on which Xt itself is based, that is not addressed in this book alone. We never leave you completely in the dark about Xt or Xlib functions that we use or reference, but you won’t learn everything there is to know about them through this particular volume.
This book covers Motif 2.1, which is the latest major release of the Motif toolkit. Motif 2.1 is based on Release 6 of the Xlib and Xt specifications (X11R6). This release of Motif provides many new features, as well as a number of enhancements to existing functionality. All of the changes in Motif 2.1 are summarized in Chapter 3, which provides references to other sections that describe the changes in more detail.
Xt provides a library of user-interface objects called widgets and gadgets, which provide a convenient interface for creating and manipulating X windows, colormaps, events, and other cosmetic attributes of the display. In short, widgets can be thought of as building blocks that the programmer uses to construct a complete application.
However, the widgets that Xt provides are generic in nature and impose no user-interface policy whatsoever. That is the job of a user-interface toolkit such as Motif. Motif provides a complete set of widgets designed to implement the application look and feel specified in the Motif Style Guide and the Motif Application Environment Specification.
The book provides a complete programmer’s guide to the Motif toolkit. While the OSF/Motif toolkit is based on Xt, the focus of the book is on Motif itself, not on the Intrinsics.Detailed information about Xt is provided by Volume 4, and references are made to that volume throughout the course of this book. You are not required to have Volume 4 in order to use this book effectively, as the books are not companion volumes, but complementary ones. However, truly robust applications require a depth of knowledge about Xt and Xlib, the layer on which Xt itself is based, that is not addressed in this book alone. We never leave you completely in the dark about Xt or Xlib functions that we use or reference, but you won’t learn everything there is to know about them through this particular volume.
This book covers Motif 2.1, which is the latest major release of the Motif toolkit. Motif 2.1 is based on Release 6 of the Xlib and Xt specifications (X11R6). This release of Motif provides many new features, as well as a number of enhancements to existing functionality. All of the changes in Motif 2.1 are summarized in Chapter 3, which provides references to other sections that describe the changes in more detail.
