Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

9 Manager Widgets

This chapter provides detailed descriptions of the various classes of Motif manager widgets. Examples explore the

various methods of positioning children within the BulletinBoard, Form, and RowColumn widgets.

As their name implies, manager widgets manage other widgets, which means that they control the size and location

(geometry) and input focus policy for one or more widget children. The relationship between managers and the

widgets that they manage is commonly referred to as the parent−child model. The manager acts as the parent and the

other widgets are its children. Since manager widgets can also be children of other managers, this model produces the

widget hierarchy, which is a framework for how widgets are laid out visually on the screen and how resources are

specified in the resource database.

While managers are used and explained in different contexts throughout this book, this chapter discusses the details of

the different manager widget classes. Chapter 3, Overview of the Motif Toolkit, discusses the general concepts behind

manager widgets and how they fit into the broader application model. You are encouraged to review the material in

this and other chapters for a wider range of examples, since it is impossible to deal with all of the possibilities here.

For an in−depth discussion of the X Toolkit Composite and Constraint widget classes, from which managers are

subclassed, see Volume Four, X Toolkit Intrinsics Programming Manual.

9.1 Types of Manager Widgets