The X Window System: Programming and Applications with Xt, OSF/Motif (2nd Edition) [Facsimile] [Paperback]

Douglas A. Young (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0131238035 | ISBN-13: 978-0131238039 | Publication Date: March 17, 1994 | Edition: 2

This completely updated and revised version of the best-selling First Edition describes how to develop interactive applications for the X Window System using the Motif user interface toolkit.The X Window System is the industry-standard software system that allows programmers to develop portable graphical user interfaces. Motif is a high-level user-interface toolkit that makes it easier to write applications that use the X Window System. Shows how to use the facilities of all three Motif libraries—Xlib, Xt Intrinsics, and visual components. Explains the Resource Manager; primitive Motif widgets; manager widgets; menus; dialogs; events and other input techniques; using color; bitmaps, pixmaps, and images; graphics contexts; text and fonts; Xlib graphics; interclient communication; creating new widget classes; creating manager widget classes; and constraint-based widget classes. For programmers developing interactive applications for the X Window System using the Motif user-interface toolkit.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A comprehensive guide to using the X Window System and the OPEN LOOK widget set to create interactive user interfaces. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

This completely updated and revised version of the best-selling First Edition describes how to develop interactive applications for the X Window System using the Motif user interface toolkit.The X Window System is the industry-standard software system that allows programmers to develop portable graphical user interfaces. Motif is a high-level user-interface toolkit that makes it easier to write applications that use the X Window System. Shows how to use the facilities of all three Motif librariesXlib, Xt Intrinsics, and visual components. Explains the Resource Manager; primitive Motif widgets; manager widgets; menus; dialogs; events and other input techniques; using color; bitmaps, pixmaps, and images; graphics contexts; text and fonts; Xlib graphics; interclient communication; creating new widget classes; creating manager widget classes; and constraint-based widget classes. For programmers developing interactive applications for the X Window System using the Motif user-interface toolkit.

Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2 edition (March 17, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131238035
• ISBN-13: 978-0131238039
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #980,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Introduction to Motif programming, May 1, 2002

By 

Steven Queen (Greenbelt, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The X Window System: Programming and Applications with Xt, OSF/Motif (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

This well written book, with numerous coded examples (that work!) is one of the best computer reference book I've encountered. Although it has not been updated to included Motif 2.1, most applications are still being written in Motif 1.2 anyway. It also includes the necessary Xt and X11 background to write GUIs. I went from zero experience with windows programming to writing full featured X-windows applications solely with the aid of this text and elementary knowledge of C. The author, who worked at Silicon Graphics, went on to write the Open Inventor library (which unfortunately is in C++). Great book!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best there is, February 23, 2007

By 

Bruce D. Wilner "Bruce David Wilner" (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The X Window System: Programming and Applications with Xt, OSF/Motif (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

I learned X-Windows programming from this many years ago. Please bear with me as I set up the scenario here. As an independent consultant, I was in a situation where--in order to win a juicy federal contract--I had to represent that I was sufficiently expert in X-Windows to (a) build a toolkit of custom widgets; (b) build tools that allowed users to choose from a set of predefined "color palettes" such that (b-i) only certain classes (let's call them "Brand Q") of applications followed those palettes, other applications following the standard system palette, and (b-ii) the palettes interacted with the window manager such that, when the last Brand Q application was iconified, the standard system palette was restored, yet, as soon as any Brand Q application was deiconified, the user's chosen palette was reinstantiated; and (c) build tools that enabled a Certified Professional Ergonomist, or CPE (!), to experiment with widget appearances and parameters so as to craft an optimal set of palettes and then represent those palettes in such a way that X applications would properly follow what was visually intended. Oh, on top of all that, it had to interact with a visual GUI builder called UIM/X that implemented a whole set of "shadow widgets" that paralleled Motif widgets and let you edit their properties--rather like a Java "bean editor" one might find useful nowadays.

Well, I had to learn enough to write a thick, highly literate design document within a couple of weeks, and then go out and build some 40K lines' worth of applications code (in C, of course) and 15K lines' worth of "system" code (I'd define as "systems code" software that (a) interacts with the window manager vis-a-vis iconification and deiconification semantics; (b) communicates complex data structures via interning atoms with the X server; (c) tortures strange color mapping behaviors from an outdated NCR monitor that could only physically display sixteen colors at a time [thus having to rely on dithering and related visual effects to achieve other "colors"] and offers tools for related colormap management tasks) within a handful of months.

Now, I'm not complaining about the level of effort--given the six-figure consulting fee that lay at the end of the rainbow. But without Young's outstanding book, I'd have been dead in the water. Oh, of course I had access to the O'Reilly series of seven or eight books--which were occasionally useful for stealing a handy application that could quickly be incrementally modified (e.g., I needed quick code for a dialogue box managing three green buttons, and one of the O'Reilly books illustrated the code for a dialogue box sporting four yellow buttons). But Young taught me enough about X that I was soon empowered to write my own functions to populate recursive pull-down menus; to write the internals for a widget that borrowed functionality from two other widgets and used cutesy memory management tricks (akin to mainframe-lingo "lookaside buffers") that let me sequentially stack up their respective resources; and to learn how to take advantage of some interesting internals facts, e.g., that the XmN family of symbolic constants are defined as strings identical to their names (a la #define foo #foo).

Bravo, Mr. Young! You taught me much, and you taught me well.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best for Xt/Motif Programming, June 5, 2000

By 

Rawitat Pulam - See all my reviews

This review is from: The X Window System: Programming and Applications with Xt, OSF/Motif (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

Once upon a time, when I moved from Windows programming environment to X-Windows.. I found things were so diffiult for me.

Lucky me, one day I went to the library and found this book. It helped me to get start with X programming in s considerable short time. The step of this book is quite easy to follow, and not difficult to understand. At least it made X more friendly to me. Although it was Japanese edition and my Japanese isn't that good. (And I will buy the English edition soon).

If you want to program in X, this one is a must, Along O'Reilly X Reference Series (which I think is the best of X-Ref).