Motif (widget toolkit)

Motif (widget toolkit)

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Motif (widget toolkit)

Screenshot of an application that uses the Open Motif toolkit

In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface (GUI) specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a competitor to the OPEN LOOK GUI. It is now the basic building block of the Common Desktop Environment.

The IEEE 1295 standard defines the Motif API. As of version 2.1 Motif supports Unicode, which has made it widely used in several multilingual environments.

The Motif look and feel is distinguished by its use of square, chiseled, three-dimensional effects for its various user interface elements — menus, buttons, sliders, text boxes, and the like. Motif's operation was designed to correspond closely with the then-familiar Microsoft Windows 3.11 and Presentation Manager interfaces, and Microsoft played a key role in designing the original style guide.http://groups.google.com/group/comp.windows.x.i386unix/msg/3ab88ef0762eee10

Motif was created by the Open Software Foundation (and was sometimes even called OSF/Motif), which has now been subsumed by The Open Group.

There are a few implementations of the Motif API. Motif the toolkit is the first. There is also Open Motif which is a release of the "original" Motif under more liberal licensing terms. Finally, the LessTif project aims to implement the API under the LGPL license.