Motif (widget toolkit)

Motif refers to both a graphical user interface (GUI) specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a competitor to the OPEN LOOK GUI. It is now the basic building block of the Common Desktop Environment.

The IEEE 1295 standard defines the Motif API. As of version 2.1 Motif supports Unicode, 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 and OS/2's Presentation Manager interfaces, and Microsoft played a key role in designing the original style guide.

Motif was created by the Open Software Foundation (and was sometimes even called OSF/Motif), which has now been subsumed by The Open Group.

There are a few implementations of the Motif API. Motif the toolkit is the first. There is also Open Motif which is a release of the "original" Motif under more liberal licensing terms. Finally, the LessTif project aims to implement the API under the LGPL license.

Motif Window Manager

A plain text file is used to generate a root menu that the user can customize. Another plain text file controls the colors of MWM's GUI but little else.

Motif and MWM were created by the Open Software Foundation (Motif was sometimes even called OSF/Motif) but is nowadays owned by The Open Group.

Originally, MWM and Motif could only be purchased but now there is also Open Motif which is a release of the "original" Motif under more liberal licensing terms (though still not quite open source/free software). Also, the LessTif project has been working hard to implement the Motif API under the LGPL license. The project includes a clone of MWM with support for virtual desktops.

Notes

Motif in overlay planes

Is there any way to put the Motif graphics (or at least the pulldown menu graphics) in another group of bitplanes, such as the overlay bitplanes? Any other options since the Xsgi doesn't support backingstore?

When you create your menus, supply the visual for the overlay planes and a suitable colormap (based on the depth of the overlay planes) to the menu shell widget. Then the menu will be in the overlay planes.

If you want, put the widget in the popup planes the same way. There are always popup planes on all SGI platforms but not always overlay planes. The problem here is that popup planes only have 2 bits/pixel and overlay planes can have up to 8.

Use getgdesc (GD_BITS_OVER_SNG_CMODE) to determine if you have overlay planes and how many bits there are. Use GLXgetconfig to find out the visual that is in the overlay/popup planes.

See also

• Motif homepage at Open Group
• Open Motif project page
• The Motif FAQ (Kenton Lee)
• Motif: Volumes 6A and 6B (O'Reilly and Associates)

Application Programming Interface