Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

1.3 How This Book Is Organized

While this book attempts to serve the widest possible audience, that does not imply that the material is so simple that

it is only useful to novice programmers. In fact, this book can be considered an advanced programmer's handbook,

since in many places, it assumes a fairly sophisticated knowledge of many features of the X Window System.

Each chapter is organized so that it gets more demanding as you read through it. Each chapter begins with a short

introduction to the particular Motif element that is the subject of the chapter. The basic mechanics involved in creating

and manipulating the object are addressed next, followed by the resources and other configurable aspects of the object.

If there is any advanced material about the object, it is presented at the end of the chapter. Many chapters also include

exercises that suggest how the material can be adapted for uses not discussed explicitly in the text.

While the chapters may be read sequentially, it is certainly not required or expected that you do so. As you will soon

discover, there are many circular dependencies that justify skipping around between chapters. Since there is no

organization that would eliminate this problem, the material is not organized so that you "learn as you go." Instead, we

organized the material in a top−down manner, starting with several chapters that provide an introduction to the Motif

look and feel, followed by chapters organized on a widget−by−widget basis. The higher−level ...