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Motif (widget toolkit)

 

 
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Motif (widget toolkit)
 
 
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In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
 (GUI) specification and the widget toolkit
Widget toolkit

A widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of GUI widget for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces ....
 for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System
X Window System

The X Window System is a computing software system and network protocol that provides a graphical user interface for networked computers. It implements the X Window System protocols and architecture and provides windowing system on raster graphics Visual display units and manages Keyboard and pointing device control functions....
 on Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
 and other POSIX
POSIX

POSIX or "Portable Operating System Interface" is the collective name of a family of related standardizations specified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to define the application programming interface , along with shell and utilities interfaces for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system, altho...
-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstation
Workstation

A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems....
s were on the rise, as a competitor to the OPEN LOOK
OPEN LOOK

OPEN LOOK is a graphical user interface specification for UNIX computer workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T....
 GUI.






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Openmotif Screenshot
In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
 (GUI) specification and the widget toolkit
Widget toolkit

A widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of GUI widget for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces ....
 for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System
X Window System

The X Window System is a computing software system and network protocol that provides a graphical user interface for networked computers. It implements the X Window System protocols and architecture and provides windowing system on raster graphics Visual display units and manages Keyboard and pointing device control functions....
 on Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
 and other POSIX
POSIX

POSIX or "Portable Operating System Interface" is the collective name of a family of related standardizations specified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to define the application programming interface , along with shell and utilities interfaces for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system, altho...
-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstation
Workstation

A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems....
s were on the rise, as a competitor to the OPEN LOOK
OPEN LOOK

OPEN LOOK is a graphical user interface specification for UNIX computer workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T....
 GUI. It is now the basic building block of the Common Desktop Environment
Common Desktop Environment

The Common Desktop Environment is a desktop environment for Unix, based on the Motif widget toolkit. Hewlett-Packard OpenVMS uses CDE as its standard desktop environment....
.

The IEEE 1295 standard
Standardization

Standardization is the process of developing and agreeing upon Standard . A standard is a document that establishes uniform engineering or technical specifications, criteria, methods, processes, or practices....
 defines the Motif API
Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
. As of version 2.1 Motif supports Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
, which has made it widely used in several multilingual environments.

The Motif look and feel is distinguished by its use of square, chiseled, three-dimensional effects for its various user interface elements — menus, buttons, sliders, text boxes, and the like. Motif's operation was designed to correspond closely with the then-familiar Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
 3.11 and OS/2's Presentation Manager
Presentation Manager

Presentation Manager is the graphical user interface that International Business Machines and Microsoft introduced in version 1.1 of their operating system OS/2 in 1988....
 interfaces, and Microsoft
Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
 played a key role in designing the original style guide.

Motif was created by the Open Software Foundation
Open Software Foundation

The Open Software Foundation was an organization founded in 1988 to create an open standard for an implementation of the Unix operating system....
 (and was sometimes even called OSF/Motif), which has now been subsumed by The Open Group
The Open Group

The Open Group is an industry consortium to set vendor- and technology-neutral open standards for computing infrastructure. It was formed when X/Open merged with the Open Software Foundation in 1996....
.

There are a few implementation
Implementation

Implementation is the realization of an application, or execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, Standardization, algorithm, or policy....
s of the Motif API. Motif the toolkit is the first. There is also Open Motif
Open Motif

Open Motif is a source code release of the Motif computer programming toolkit by The Open Group, the current owners of Motif.Open Motif has the same functionality and source code as Motif, but is offered under a more permissive license....
 which is a release of the "original" Motif under more liberal licensing terms. Finally, the LessTif
LessTif

LessTif is a free software reimplementation or Clone of the Motif computer programming toolkit.LessTif is developed by the Hungry Programmers....
 project aims to implement the API under the LGPL license.

See also

  • Motif Window Manager
    Motif Window Manager

    In computing, the Motif Window Manager is an X-Windows window manager based on the Motif toolkit.MWM is a lightweight and, by today's standards, minimalist window manager....
  • MoOLIT
    MoOLIT

    MoOLIT was a graphical user interface library and application programming interface created by Unix System Laboratories in an attempt to make a compromise between the two competing look-and-feels for Unix workstations at the time—OPEN LOOK and OSF Motif ....
  • GTK+
    GTK+

    GTK+, or The GIMP Toolkit, is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt ....
     and GNOME
    Gnome

    A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus....
  • Qt
    Qt (toolkit)

    Qt is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of graphical user interface programs , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers....
     and KDE
    KDE

    KDE is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system....
  • 4Dwm
    4Dwm

    4Dwm is a window manager normally used on Silicon Graphics workstations running IRIX. 4Dwm is derived from the older mwm window manager and uses the Motif widget toolkit on top of the X Window System found on most Unix systems....


External links

  • (Kenton Lee)
  • (O'Reilly and Associates, free PDF
    Portable Document Format

    Portable Document Format is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system....
     downloads)