Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

1 Preface

By convention, a preface describes the book itself, while the introduction describes the subject matter. You should

read through the preface to get an idea of how the book is organized, the conventions it follows, and so on.

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 Four, X Toolkit Intrinsics Programming Manual, and references are made to that volume ...