Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

versions of the toolkit, you need to use a Text widget rather than a Label to provide selection capabilities.

Labels have a number of added visual advantages over Text widgets. The text in a Label can be greyed out when it is

insensitive and it can display text using multiple fonts. The Text widgets do not support multiple fonts. In Motif 1.2,

an insensitive Text widget greys out its text, while in Motif 1.1 it does not. Labels are also lighter−weight objects than

Text widgets. There is little overhead in maintaining or displaying a Label and there is no need to handle event

processing on a Label to the same degree as for a Text widget. All things considered, we would recommend using

Label widgets over Text widgets.

However, when it comes to interactive objects, Labels are not the best choice. In most cases where you want to allow

the user to click on a Label, it is more appropriate to use a PushButton or a ToggleButton, since they are designed to

support user interaction. Furthermore, users who are familiar with other Motif applications will not expect to have to

interact with Labels. In short, the best thing to do with Label widgets is simple and obvious: use them to display

labels.

There are a number of resources associated with Labels that are used by other Motif objects or by widget classes that

are subclassed from Label. For example, since Labels (and PushButtons) are used extensively as menu items in

menus, they can have accelerators, mnemonics, and other visual resources set to provide ...