X Toolkit Intrinsics (also known as Xt, for X toolkit) is a

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

that implements an API to facilitate the development of programs with a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

(GUI) for the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting ...

. It can be used in the C or C++ languages. Xlib and XCB in the X Window System graphics stack

The low-level library Xlib is the client-side implementation of the X11 protocol. It communicates with an X server, but does not provide any function for implementing

graphical control elements Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture ...

("widgets"), such as buttons or menus. The Xt library provides support for creating widget types, but does not provide any itself. A programmer could use the Xt library to create and use a new type of widget. Xt implemented some object oriented concepts, such as inheritance (the user could make their own button by reusing code written for another type of button), events, and callbacks. Since the graphical user interface of applications typically requires a number of widget types, most developers are reluctant to write their own, and instead prefer to use libraries such as Xaw,

Motif Motif may refer to: General concepts * Motif (chess composition), an element of a move in the consideration of its purpose * Motif (folkloristics), a recurring element that creates recognizable patterns in folklore and folk-art traditions * Moti ...

and OLIT that provide a set of widgets. Most widely used toolkits such as GTK and Qt do not use the Xt library. Rather, they use Xlib or XCB directly.

External links

''X Toolkit Intrinsics – C Language Interface''pdf
, X.Org Foundation *
The place of Intrinsics in X11
Professor David Marshall, Cardiff School of Computer Science,

Cardiff University , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...

TestXt2
Example C program that creates a Menu Bar using just Xt/Xaw * {{Widget toolkits X-based libraries C (programming language) libraries Graphics libraries