Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

exclusively by technical people who understand the environment and know how to work within it. But it is now time

to consider users who know absolutely nothing about computers and who don't want to−−they are only using your

software because they have to.

2.3 What Is Motif?

So, back to Motif. What is it and how can it help you solve your user−interface design goals? To start, Motif is a set of

guidelines that specifies how a user interface for graphical computers should look and feel. This term describes how

an application appears on the screen (the look) and how the user interacts with it (the feel).

the figure shows a Motif application.

A Motif application

The user interacts with the application by typing at the keyboard, and by clicking, selecting, and dragging various

graphic elements of the application with the mouse. For example, any application window can be moved on the screen

by moving the pointer to the top of the window's frame (the title bar), pressing and holding down a button on the

mouse, and dragging the window to a new location. The window can be made larger or smaller by pressing a mouse

button on any of the resize corners and dragging.

Most applications sport buttons that can be clicked with the mouse to initiate application actions. Motif uses clever

highlighting and shadowing to make buttons, and other components, look three−dimensional. When a button is

clicked on, it actually ...