Other Enhanced Motif Window Manager

[garaksarr]

Hello,

I have been using this window manager for the last few months and I think it's great!

https://fastestcode.org/emwm.html

The author also wrote motif-based file manager called Xfile and an image viewer called Ximaging.

Cheers

 

[Ogis]

Yes, it is very good window manager. It allow to have a CDE like desktop without having the complexity of CDE. Also, it is have a real FULLSCREEN!

Xfile

This application is in beta development stage and hasn't been thoroughly tested yet. But this project is promising.

 

[pebkac]

Interesting, but you are building from source yourself, as there is no port yet, right?

 

[garaksarr]

Interesting, but you are building from source yourself, as there is no port yet, right?

Yes, it needs to be built from source.

 

[6502]

Looks like Windows 3.1 - base background with icons for minimized running apps.

 

[mer]

Looks like Windows 3.1 - base background with icons for minimized running apps.

Actually it looks like standard good old Motif. Could one argue that "Motif looks like Windows 3.1"? Sure. But if one just needs a window manager, it's good.

 

[kpedersen]

Nice. I have always planned to have a crack at a motif file manager but never got time. Xfile is looking really good. Actually it seems like the authors projects and aims in general are pretty cool. This could turn into the modern Motif desktop we all need.

I think it is the other way round. Windows 3.1 was designed to look like Motif which was the current "UI trend" back then everyone was trying to copy. Irix's WM (admittedly based on Mwm), Fvwm, DESQview were all giving it a shot.

Ironically Windows 3.1 was more flat so ends up looking more "modern" than Windows 95 -> Windows 7. Funny how this stuff goes around in circles.

 

[mer]

kpedersen agree on your second paragraph and your last sentence.

 

[George]

Motif is super lightweight, right?

It's hard to find ressources on how to program with it. That's why I chose the "easier" gtk3 in my project.

 

[mer]

Motif is super lightweight, right?

It's hard to find ressources on how to program with it. That's why I chose the "easier" gtk3 in my project.

I think the problem is all the documentation on how to use the Motif toolkit is out of print

 

[garaksarr]

The last time I took a crack at Motif development, I used this guide.

 

[Alain De Vos]

emwm is a nice window manager.

 

[cracauer@]

Motif is super lightweight, right?

On SunOS 4.x it counted as heavyweight

Times change. Lack of adding piles of features can be a good thing.

 

[Ozric]

As a CDE user I wanted to try out emwm, and I noticed that it was added as a port the other day: x11-wm/emwm

 

[pebkac]

Yes and I will work on the utils port (with the session manager etc) as well in the coming days, this is missing from the emwm port and will be a separate package.

 

[Phishfry]

The last time I took a crack at Motif development, I used this guide.

It looks like it is now an open book from OReilly
https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/toc.html

Thanks. Hopefully its easy to read.
So mostly Motif is on top of Xorg? Instead of gtk/qt/others.
So only drm driver needed and EMWM as desktop?
Easy to make basic window apps with motif? GPIO status page like?
Counters? Gauges? Sliders?
Not here:

Motif Xm Widgets

Motif widgets are displayed on the Palette for all languages except Java and for all platforms. Initially, Motif widgets are grouped in the following folders:

motif.ics.com

 

[Phishfry]

OK thats is too much for me. I need basic C skills first.

  Cardinal
   MrmRegisterClass(class_code, class_name, proc_name, create_proc,
                    widget_class)
       MrmType     class_code;
       String      class_name;
       String      proc_name;
       Widget    (*create_proc)();
       WidgetClass widget_class;

 

[Phishfry]

So is the UIL and mrm programming part still relevant ?
Do you still have to use the Motif UIL compiler?

 

[Holger]

So mostly Motif is on top of Xorg? Instead of gtk/qt/others.

Motif is based on the “X toolkit intrinsics library” (x11-toolkits/libXt). So, strictly speaking, not directly on top of X11.

 

[Phishfry]

When you build a Motif application, you make calls into the Motif library, the Xt library, Xlib, and the normal Unix system libraries. This is one of the things that makes Motif programming so complicated

https://smnd.sk/anino/programming/X/motif/section2_1_3.html

 

[Phishfry]

Why won't this example compile? What am I missing? I am linked to lX11. Is the /usr/local/ path needed?

cc -o first first.c -lXm -lXt -lX11

first.c:1:10: fatal error: 'X11/Intrinsic.h' file not found
#include <X11/Intrinsic.h>
         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 error generated.

# find /usr/local/ -name Intrinsic.h

/usr/local/include/X11/Intrinsic.h

 

[Holger]

What am I missing? I am linked to lX11. Is the /usr/local/ path needed?

Yes, the path /usr/local/include is not a built-in default, you need to supply -I/usr/local/include, probably also -L/usr/local/lib.

For this reason, I like to use a build system that does the job for me. Here is a devel/cmake template, which I used for one of my projects:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.1)

project(helloworld)

set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS} -std=c11 -Wall -Wextra")

find_package(X11 REQUIRED)
find_package(Motif REQUIRED)

include_directories(
  ${MOTIF_INCLUDE_DIR}
  ${X11_INCLUDE_DIR}
  ${X11_Xt_INCLUDE_PATH}
)

link_libraries(
  ${MOTIF_LIBRARIES}
  ${X11_Xt_LIB}
  ${X11_LIBRARIES}
)

add_executable(helloworld main.c)

Quite much boiler-plate, but it scales really well.

 

[Phishfry]

you need to supply -I/usr/local/include,

That was it. I tried manually adding path to X11 in header but that failed later on.

 

[Phishfry]

Oops you were right.

cc -o first first.c -lXm -lXt -lX11 -I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib


first.c:5:9: warning: type specifier missing, defaults to 'int' [-Wimplicit-int]

        main(int argc, char *argv[])

        ^

1 warning generated.

Thanks. I will give this tutorial a shot.

 

[Phishfry]

Back on topic. Would you actually use the drm drivers or is that un-needed fluff on EMWM?

Is there any advantage to using drm drivers versus scfb for this lightweight desktop?

I see Firefox in a screenshot so that would need drm drivers to work right?

Seems like it might make a nice kiosk desktop like OpenBox..