computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...

, the Motif Window Manager (MWM) is an

X window manager An X window manager is a window manager that runs on top of the X Window System, a windowing system mainly used on Unix-like systems. Unlike MacOS Classic, macOS, and Microsoft Windows platforms (excepting Microsoft Windows explorer.exe shel ...

based on the Motif toolkit.

Overview

MWM is a lightweight window manager, having robust compliance and configuration of the features it has. MWM first appeared on in the early-1990s, along with the Motif toolkit. MWM supports: Common User Interface (i.e., Alt-Tab is switch windows, a standard), some International support,

Common Desktop Environment The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif widget toolkit. It was part of the UNIX 98 Workstation Product Standard, and was for a long time the Unix desktop associated with commercial ...

, X Resource Database (/home/app-defaults/ and runtime), X Session Manager protocol, X Edited Resource Protocol (edit widget data), desktop icons, optional use of images to decorate, and had supported

Virtual desktop In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the virtual space of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical limits of the s ...

(removed since 2.1) but now supports non-virtual desktop panning. MWM is a

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunction ...

, not a full

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

, so it only manages windows; it is expected that configuration, programs, sound, are provided by other programs. A plain text file is parsed to customize menus, user input mappings, management features, and user made functions of the same. DEC VAXstation 4000 96 OpenVMS 6

Origins

Motif and MWM were created by the

Open Software Foundation The Open Software Foundation (OSF) was a not-for-profit industry consortium for creating an open standard for an implementation of the operating system Unix. It was formed in 1988 and merged with X/Open in 1996, to become The Open Group. Despit ...

(Motif was sometimes even called "OSF/Motif") but is nowadays owned by

The Open Group The Open Group is a global consortium that seeks to "enable the achievement of business objectives" by developing "open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." It has over 840 member organizations and provides a number of servi ...

Licensing

Originally, MWM and Motif could only be purchased. The same software was also available as OpenMotif, though not on properly

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

terms. In late 2012, Motif and MWM were released under the LGPL-2.1-or-later license as free software.

Notes

References

External links

SourceForge: Motif
(source code)
SourceForge: Motif 2.0
build libXm.so.2.0.n (

Data Display Debugger Data Display Debugger (GNU DDD) is a graphical user interface (using the Motif toolkit) for command-line debuggers such as GDB, DBX, JDB, HP Wildebeest Debugger, XDB, the Perl debugger, the Bash debugger, the Python debugger, and the GNU Make ...

uses 2.0) with easier automake and optional panner * *
Motif: Volumes 6A and 6B
(O'Reilly and Associates, free

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...