Motif Programming Manual - Volume Six A

ISBN  1-56592-016-3   Price  approximately £23  UK
Dan Heller and Paula M. Ferguson
 26 Chapters, 1 Appendix and index in 939 pages
 

Chapter List

            Preface

1    Introduction to Motif
2    The Motif Programming Model
3    Overview of the Motif Toolkit
4    The Main Window
5    Introduction to Dialogs
6    Selection Dialogs
7    Custom Dialogs
8    Manager Widgets
9    Scrolled Windows and Scroll Bars
10  The Drawing Area Widget
11  Labels and Buttons
12  The List Widget
13  The Scale Widget
14  Text Widgets
15  Menus
16  Interfacing with the Window Manager
17  The Clipboard
18  Drag and Drop
19  Compound Strings
20  Signal Handling
21  Advanced Dialog Programming
22  Introduction to UIL
23  Using a User Interface with UIL
24  Creating a User Interface with UIL
25  Building an Application with UIL
26  Advanced UIL Programming
 

Appendix
  Additional Example Programs

        Motif was recently Open Sourced and there is now Open Motif available for download on the internet.  Could be a good time to learn a bit more ?    If you want a detailed explanation of what Motif is about then make sure you get volume six B as well.  Nothing worse than being stuck in traffic forever ?

Review

         It's best to read this book first and then Volume 6B later on.  Volume 6B is a completely different book which explains other things.  As with all O'Reilly books the entire concept is well thought out from beginning to end.  Volume 6A describes how to write applications using the Motif toolkit from the Open Software Foundation.  The introduction and the Motif Programming model should give you all that you need to understand some basic ideas.   There is also some source code that you can download from the O'Reilly site for later use.  Overview of the Motif Toolkit gives some wonderful graphical examples of the structure and mechanics of Motif development that can't be found elsewhere.  The chapters that follow go into detailed explanation of the various widgets and what to do with them.

The Main Window starts with an intro and then goes through the Menu Bar.  A sample explanation is given.  Introduction to dialogs is followed by two other chapters on the same subject thus giving a useful intro to that subject.

All of the other chapters give lots of information about all aspects of Motif programming.  At the end of the book there are some more example programs which are very useful of further ideas.

It's well worth getting hold of these books if you want to do Motif with Linux or Unix.  There are good examples with plenty of detail and the kind of solid advice that you just can't get hold of from anywhere else.  Not quite the sort of thing that you would read on a sunny Caribbean beach but it might be the book that gets you there ??

Review by  Richard Ibbotson