http://www.osnews.com/story/18156/OpenMotif_2_3_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:28:13 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?251134 http://osnews.com/thread?251134 Who in their right mind would use motif in todays GUI oriented day? I want eyecandy and motif is such an eyesore of a GUI (IMNSHO) that I can't believe that work is still being done on it. Ugrh! Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pawstar) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251135 http://osnews.com/thread?251135 Lots of people. Its APIs are the same cross platform and don't change much which equals lower cost of maintaining your app. Ya, it's not pretty but motif is still popular and tons of legacy apps still use it. Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zizban) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251145 http://osnews.com/thread?251145 Scientific applications, high reliability environments, etc.

Anywhere performance, simplicity, and memory usage is valued over eyecandy. That and anywhere you need backwards compatibility. Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251150 http://osnews.com/thread?251150 And further think of this way: If you want to make an app that you know has to run on HP-UX, Solaris or OpenVMS, then ya, you'll use Motif. Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zizban) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251162 http://osnews.com/thread?251162 "Anywhere performance, simplicity, and memory usage is valued over eyecandy. That and anywhere you need backwards compatibility."



Oh god, as a poor soul that grew up programming this monstruosity 10+ yrs ago I never thought that CS would de-evolve to such a point where what you just said actually is justified.

When motif came out, it was such a bloated hideous pig of a framework that sometimes we had to hack somethings directly on the x-toolkit (which was an even more hideous thing, but slightly less bloated). It was fun to see some motif widgets bring to its knees a $30K+ workstation :-). Man, how things change.... now this bloated pig is considered "light" Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (javiercero1) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251193 http://osnews.com/thread?251193 When motif came out, it was such a bloated hideous pig of a framework that sometimes we had to hack somethings directly on the x-toolkit (which was an even more hideous thing, but slightly less bloated). It was fun to see some motif widgets bring to its knees a $30K+ workstation :-). Man, how things change.... now this bloated pig is considered "light"

Yes, but isn't the fact that Motif is now considered "light" sad? Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251207 http://osnews.com/thread?251207 I'm curious as to whether this is still valid.
Haven't GTK ant Qt been ported to HP , AIX,
etc?
I don't think they are linux or x86 only Thu, 28 Jun 2007 04:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OStourist) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251222 http://osnews.com/thread?251222 I'm actually using OpenMotif at work right now (on a Solaris-machine).

Sure, it doesn't look great and the usability could always be better.. But it -works-. No-nonsense, and the job gets done. Although I do miss wobbly windows...Edited 2007-06-28 06:16 Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (postlogic) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251230 http://osnews.com/thread?251230 No the aren't but on the other hand they lack a lot of quality even in Linux. Thu, 28 Jun 2007 07:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Oliver) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251232 http://osnews.com/thread?251232 AFAIK, it's a breach to the OpenGroup license to use OpenMotif on Solaris, as it's a closed-source OS.

It might be legitimate to use OpenMotif on OpenSolaris, however. Thu, 28 Jun 2007 08:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bass) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251237 http://osnews.com/thread?251237 Haven't GTK ant Qt been ported to HP , AIX, etc?

I think Qt certainly runs on AIX now, because IBM sponsored some work to get KDE up and running on it some while back. As for GTK, there was some big noise about HP defaulting to Gnome on a lot of their stuff some while back that seems to have gone quiet.

I would imagine they've both been ported quite widely now.

However, there's still a ton of stuff using Motif and it just shows the importance of backwards compatibility and looking after what is already there.Edited 2007-06-28 08:38 Thu, 28 Jun 2007 08:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251249 http://osnews.com/thread?251249 On a slightly related note, there has been some progress on the petition to fully open source Motif. This would erase the problem of running OpenMotif on closed source platforms (solaris, aix etc).

http://www.marutan.net/cde/

The people from OpenMotif.org have been very supportive of this effort. Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (flibble) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251289 http://osnews.com/thread?251289 "AFAIK, it's a breach to the OpenGroup license to use OpenMotif on Solaris, as it's a closed-source OS. "

Solaris comes with all the normal motif libraries, I don't think openmotif is needed. Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (javiercero1) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251298 http://osnews.com/thread?251298 If one's happy with Motif 2.1 API, then, of course, it's right.

Motif 2.3, has some extensions, however :-) Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bass) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251300 http://osnews.com/thread?251300 Peter, it's great news!

Thank you much for the work you've done! Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bass) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?251391 http://osnews.com/thread?251391 "Scientific applications, high reliability environments, etc."

Would you give control over your weak life functions to an ICU (intensive care unit) that is controlled by a "Vista" PC just because the nurse wants eyecandy, wobbling windows and dancing elephants? :-)

No, honestly: Motif is still interesting in contexts where developers of high specialized software (evaluation of computer tomographies, somnology laboratory, automated blood lab analysis etc.) need to rely on the presence of a special GUI base framework, because their software needs to be able to be installed and run on a Sun, IBM or SGI machine.

Motif is simplicistic, minimal and functional in many regards (surely not in memory usage), it offers a high grade of compatibility between OSes and therefore hardware systems.

It is used everywhere where eyecandy explicitly is a no-issue, where users do concentrate on content, not on form. Form does not beat content. :-)

Luckily, it's not that the world does just consist of x86 PCs and "Windows"... :-) Thu, 28 Jun 2007 21:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Doc Pain) Comments