23 Introduction to UIL
This chapter provides a basic introduction to the User Interface Language (UIL) and the Motif Resource Manager
(Mrm). The chapter describes UIL and Mrm, talks about how to use them, and discusses the advantages and
disadvantages of using them to create a user interface. It also presents a "Hello, World" application that is meant to
provide you with a basic understanding of how to use both UIL and Mrm to develop an application with Motif.
In this chapter, we introduce the OSF/Motif User Interface Language (UIL) and the Motif Resource Manager (Mrm).
We begin by explaining the purpose and capabilities of UIL and Mrm. Then we describe the structure of both a UIL
module and a program that uses Mrm by walking through the traditional "Hello World" application. The example
gives you an overview of how a user interface is described with UIL and created with Mrm. For the most part we
concentrate on the big picture and leave the discussion of low−level details until Chapter 24, Creating a User
Interface With UIL.
In all of these chapters on UIL, we assume that you are familiar with the basics of the X Toolkit (Xt) and the concepts
of Motif programming discussed earlier in this book. At the very least, you must understand the process of widget
creation and the concept of widget resources. (Xt programming is covered in Volume Four, X Toolkit Intrinsics
Programming Manual, and you can find references for Xt and Motif in Volume Five, X Toolkit Intrinsics Reference
Manual; and Volume ...