The Motif User Interface Toolkit
Currently, the OSF/Motif toolkit is the most widely-accepted user
interface toolkit available for UNIX"-based systems. This toolkit
offers a rich supply of widgets, (buttons, scrollbars, menus, etc.)
that can be used to construct an application's user interface. The
Motif toolkit provides several key benefits to developers. Because
the Motif toolkit is both available and recognized as a standard
across nearly all UNIX platforms, it gives developers the ability
to write software that runs on all vendor's versions of UNIX. The
Motif toolkit also provides some features that have been lacking in
earlier toolkits. For example, the Motif toolkit provides strong
support for writing internationalized software. It also provides a
distinctive appearance, support for various interaction styles,
cut-and-paste, user-customization, and more. The widgets it provides
are extremely flexible, allowing developers to mold the toolkit to
suit their needs.
From a developer's perspective, however, the Motif toolkit offers a
programmer's model that has changed little from the earliest user
interface toolkits. Applications must construct interfaces from very
low-level elements that provide only limited support for tasks
applications need to perform. Buttons, scrollbars, and rendering
areas represent a necessary and useful minimum feature set for an
interactive application. However, the availability of such
individual building-blocks falls short of enabling developers to
create a complete application. The Motif toolkit provides the raw
elements for constructing a user interface. Unfortunately, complete
applications require much more than a collection of widgets.
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