Motif

I think Motif is a peak architecture for GUI programming. There was nothing better and more readable in that area designed since then. GTK or QT is a pure masochism (in bad self destructive way, not in a good BDSM way) to program in. The way it's organized makes sense. Hierarchies of data structures and order of creation of every layer stuff that would be displayed makes sense. There is no unnecessary glue in between layers. It's well documented - especially in contrast to GTK which has horrible documentation that you can have no idea how to draw a simple window after reading it. It's Nirvana of GUI programming. Only serious reason why it's clean design didn't affect more popular solution is because it has been for decades proprietary software. If it was Free Software there would be no reason to ever create gtk. At least not in it's abominable form that we all know and hate. Links:https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/toc.html https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/toc.html http://www.motifdeveloper.com/code.html https://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave.Marshall/X_lecture/

>>29131 Why 2014 though?

>>29134 >Why 2014 though? ???

>>29134 >Why 2014 though? What 2014?

>>29140 I don't. Do elaborate

>>29142 S U C K S

>>29140 Why spill the soykaf without explaining why?

>>29145 >why C++ s u c k s which part of C++ you don't understand?

>>29146 We have a habit over here of elaborating on our opinions. No need to write up an essay - if you believe that the points you want to make are well known, it should be enough to briefly allude to them and maybe link to a good summary or two. It helps keep discussion productive, so I think you should try it.

>>29131 > GTK or QT QT is great for cross-platform programs. tk is easy and sane, too. And wxWidgets is a good alternative for QT and GTK. Actually, there is no reason to use GTK.

>>29147 I have habit of not briefly auditing well known flame wars in a topic not related to the subject of such flame war.

Unfortunately back in the 90s motif required a license for it. We probably wouldn't have the inconsistant mess we have now if the unix companies of the time weren't wngaged in the unix wars

>>29139 >Qt Qt is a testament to bloat. Why does a widget toolkit need a testing framework, networking support, SQL database integration, audio and video processing, or goddamn radio functionality? It's just a widget toolkit. Its job is to put graphical controls in a window and, ideally, make them look good. If I needed any of that other crap, I'd look for separate libraries for those specific features. They lack the baggage of being attached to the overall Qt platform, and will probably do it way better to boot. In my experience, it's also not actually that good at cross-platform stuff. Qt apps look like Qt apps, especially on non X/Wayland systems like MacOs and Windows. It doesn't help that they also run like soykaf. >Tk Tk's mostly good, but its reliance on Tcl is kind of a sticking point for me. I don't want to embed an entire scripting language in my compiled program solely for the sake of a GUI. >wxWidgets and GTK wxWidgets and GTK are better than Qt but still share a lot of its problems. wxWidgets is better than GTK though.

>>29161 >Why does a widget toolkit need [...] Because it isn't a widget toolkit, but rather a overarching framework for building portable graphical applications in C++, and the widget toolkit is just one part of it. Now, whether this is a reasonable thing to be is a different matter.

I'm reading Vol6a. I'm on the third chapter on dialog (building custom dialogs), and have done only example programs. After reading that book, I want to write a small agenda/calendar application. I also want to convert my unfinished Xlib file manager into motif. Then, I'm going to read books on Xt. My end goal is to understand how Xt works and build a new, simple toolkit based on X Toolkit Intrinsics.

>>29161 Any opinion on McCLIM?

>>29161 >Why does a widget toolkit need a testing framework, networking support, SQL database integration, audio and video processing, or goddamn radio functionality because of async braindamage erlang won

>>30143 Not the one you're asking but: I like CLIM on a conceptual level, but McCLIM, the only serious free implementation I've found of it, just looks piss-ugly, and has the single-buffering is clearly visible whenever resizing a frame. I hear that mcclim-dev's priorities are on working on the CLX backend, but I wish they can improve these two pain-points about it.

>>29134 >>29135 >>29136 The calendar on OP's pic show 2014, probably the date the screenshot was taken.

I did a deep dive into this stuff a couple months ago. I was actually surprised at how straightforward Xlib and motif are. I ended up making a pong like game in Xlib and I started making a calendar app with motif but I eventually lost interest. Unfortunately the stuff really isn't relevant anymore. It's a shame because it is peak unix aesthetic.

>>30143 The ugly screenshots at https://mcclim.common-lisp.dev/excite.html are such a turn-off. They destroy all "excitement".

>>29161 >Why does a widget toolkit need a testing framework, networking support, SQL database integration, audio and video processing, or goddamn radio functionality? What radio functionality does Qt have? This? https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-qtmultimedia-radio.html

Lainchan be like: old things are good, new things are bad.

>>31085 That's true for any technology community.

>>31048 >Xlib Tried it over a decade ago and am having a PTSD since when someone mentions programming using it. Motif is much less painfull tho. And a lot less painfull than GTK.

>>31073 >>30434 >>30143 This is obviously a subjective aesthetic preference, but personally I vastly prefer McCLIM's retro X11 look to modern GTK/Electron soykaf that tries to basically copy the design of Apple/Google products. McCLIM (and Motif) have an aesthetic sensibility that to me says "my computer is a tool and a workspace, not a toy or a media consumption machine", and I like that. I mostly just wish it was easy to recolor it to match my personal colorscheme, but since everything in CLIM is CLOS objects it shouldn't be too hard to do that.

I am not familiar with Motif, but I like the look of its windows. How do I experience Motif these days? Would I get the full experience by installing the Motif Window Manager (mwm) provided in the Debian/Ubuntu repositories?

>>32537 MWM has some issues in a modern environment. There is a fork called EMWM which addresses some of those issues. If you want something practical to daily drive though, I'd recommend getting into FVWM instead. Way more customizable and better support. Check out https://datagubbe.se/fvwm/ for configs.

>>32564 I saw that FVWM version 2 has MWM emulation. FVWM 2 is no longer actively developed though. They are moving to a new version: FVWM version 3. Does FVWM version 3 have MWM emulation too?

>>32566 Not really sure, I think it should. FVWM2 still receives bugfixes though so it's completely fine to use.

>>29146 There's nothing wrong with C++. You'll never be a programmer or a woman with your attitude

Has anyone ever used CDE in modern times? How well does it work out of the box?

I can install it but not use it I am right back to the loginscreen if I select it as DE

>>32848 The bulk of C++ hate is ideological. Corporate drones hate it because it's too low-level and dangerous for them; they can't just throw nonsense at the compiler and expect it to solve all their problems for them. And "real programmers" hate it because it lets you use high-level abstractions like classes and templates, which in their minds violates the sanctity of the holy "the computer" or some soykaf. Speaking personally, while it definitely has its fair share of problems, I like C++. It's one of very few languages where I can tell the computer directly exactly what I want it to do and how to do it and have it happen. No dirty hacks like C, no arcane nonsense like Rust; it's fast, powerful, to the point, and gets out of my fuarrrking way.