It's an interesting exercise to pull up an old (but reasonably complex) Xlib app and run it on a modern machine; xfig, for example. They never pause for breath

It's an interesting exercise to pull up an old (but reasonably complex) Xlib app and run it on a modern machine; xfig, for example. They never pause for breath. Like, you cannot see the application think. Ever. Whenever you ask it to do something, it responds instantly. You click the mouse, and by the next frame the app has updated and is waiting for your instructions. It's astonishing how much nicer this makes them to use. (And it's interesting that the Xaw classic design is... um... well, it's as ugly as hell, but it's a kind of functional ugliness which you stop seeing after a bit. Motif, on the other hand, remains awful. The really interesting one of the old widget sets is Open Look, which still looks elegant and polished today: http://www.daylight.com/dayhtml/doc/thor/thor.sample3.gif http://www.daylight.com/dayhtml/doc/thor/thor.sample3.gif) I wonder if there's any mileage in resurrecting one of these old widget systems? Update it to work with modern languages and desktop environments, make sure the accessibility's up to scratch (Motif got this right; don't know about Xaw and Open Look), make sure that modern workflow menus-and-windows apps can be written using them...