Motif 2.3.4 On The LGPL License

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Motif 2.3.4 On The LGPL License

Integrated Computer Solutions released Motif 2.3.4 this week and with the point release comes the availability of the X toolkit under the LGPL v2.1 license...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTIxNTU

[Cthulhux]

Finally. Maybe this means that well-looking desktop environments will have their renaissance.

[patstew]

Finally. Maybe this means that well-looking desktop environments will have their renaissance.

What? Motif is hideous. Qt (and GTK) are better in every way, the only thing this benefits is legacy apps.

[Cthulhux]

Qt is ugly. I am not blind enough for these designs. Maybe when I'm over 60 and need large, colorful buttons, I'll come back to it.

[uid313]

This is good if you for some reason want to run CDE (Common Desktop Environment) which was popular in the mid-90s.

It was used by Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, etc.

[Cthulhux]

Don't forget OpenCDE.

I actually like it.

[Wilfred]

This is good if you for some reason want to run CDE (Common Desktop Environment) which was popular in the mid-90s.

It was used by Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, etc.

I've used that. It was hideous. Nobody serious wants to use motif. At the very least they are more than ten years to late to open source it.

[RealNC]

Gnome 3 should switch to Motif now. It would be an improvement.

[0xBADCODE]

Cool but some ~10 years late or so. So everyone has gone GTK and Qt and you will have hard time finding any program using this toolkit or persuading someone to use this toolkit in their programs.

Though on secon thought I think MS should rewrite win8 using this toolkit. They're so similar in their awkward ancient and primitive appearance

[Ibidem]

Emacs, Nedit, Vim, the Data Display Debugger, XMPI, snd, IBM OpenDX, Viewmol, xmakemol, Xephem, Xpdf, plan, Open Inventor, GRASS GIS, Grid Engine, the Elk Scheme interpreter (and CMU Common Lisp, as well), and Clustal all have Motif UIs. You may not need many of them on a daily basis, but I wouldn't say that's "a hard time finding any program..."

Cthulhux: try changing the Qt theme, and look at the alternatives: One of them is "CDE"

I've heard of a few things that CDE/Motif did that are similar to the latest "standards"/styles.

Also, for anyone who dislikes the default Motif look, there are a lot of changes you can make (via X resources); my own favorites include

*enableThinThickness: true
XTerm*background: black
XTerm*foreground: white
*XmCascadeButton*shadowThickness:       1
*XmDrawnButton*shadowThickness: 1
*XmPushButton*shadowThickness:  1
*XmPushButtonGadget*shadowThickness:    1
*DtMenuButton*shadowThickness:   1
*XmText*shadowThickness:        1
*XmTextField*shadowThickness:   1
*enableButtonTab:       True
*enableDefaultButton:   True
*enableEtchedInMenu:    True
*enableMenuInCascade:   True
*enableMultiKeyBindings:        True
*enableToggleColor:     True
*enableToggleVisual:    True
*highlightThickness:    1

So for me, it probably looks nothing like it looks for you. And there are a whole lot more changes that can be made, too.