3 ms·

I was in a used bookstore a few years ago, and ran across a book titled something like "User Interface Design with MOTIF". Well, it had been a power of years si

by kabdib 7y ago

I was in a used bookstore a few years ago, and ran across a book titled something like "User Interface Design with MOTIF". Well, it had been a power of years since I last touched X-Windows (with intent to draw pixels, anyway) and I started leafing through it. Looking for user interface examples. Leaf, leaf, nothing. Flip, flip, flipflipflip . . . oh, we're at the index. Nothing. Over 300 pages and no pictures. Zero diagrams. No user interface principles or discussion about good or bad practices. It was all descriptions of APIs. There was nothing about user interface design in there at all. IMHO, that's all you really need to know about X-Windows.

pengaru 7y ago
> IMHO, that's all you really need to know about X-Windows. That there was at least one poor, misleadingly titled book about MOTIF? I've had many X-related textbooks over the years, and frankly the documentation was exceptionally good and felt like a total waste on something as byzantine as X.
- anthk 7y ago
  OpenBSD has one book about Motif in in the books sectin of ports. book/vol6a I think.
pjmlp 7y ago
Steve Jobs had a couple of interesting remarks regarding UNIX's culture lack of understanding of UI/UX. The only exceptions are NeWS and NeXTSTEP (OS X derived from it anyway). Everything else are just clones of other desktop OS, with GNOME and KDE trying as good as they can, while dealing with such clunky stack.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  (An excerpt from another longer reply I just posted): From: npg@East (Neil Groundwater - Sun Consulting) Date: Wed, Jun 27, 1990 Subject: Humor from Dennis Ritchie (at USENIX) (Actually Dennis's latter remark was attributed by him to Rob Pike) from Unix Today 6/25 page 5. "..., Richie reminded the audience that Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that X was brain-dead and would soon die. "He was half-right," Ritchie said. "Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks." http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/133229_in-his-90-usenix-presentation-dennis-ritchie-reminded-the-audience-that-steve-jobs-stood-at-the-same-podium-a-few-years-back-and-announced-that-x-windows-was-brain-dead-and-would-soon-die.html http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/1332...

by kabdib 7y ago

pengaru 7y ago

> IMHO, that's all you really need to know about X-Windows. That there was at least one poor, misleadingly titled book about MOTIF? I've had many X-related textbooks over the years, and frankly the documentation was exceptionally good and felt like a total waste on something as byzantine as X.

anthk 7y ago
OpenBSD has one book about Motif in in the books sectin of ports. book/vol6a I think.

pjmlp 7y ago

Steve Jobs had a couple of interesting remarks regarding UNIX's culture lack of understanding of UI/UX. The only exceptions are NeWS and NeXTSTEP (OS X derived from it anyway). Everything else are just clones of other desktop OS, with GNOME and KDE trying as good as they can, while dealing with such clunky stack.

DonHopkins 7y ago
(An excerpt from another longer reply I just posted): From: npg@East (Neil Groundwater - Sun Consulting) Date: Wed, Jun 27, 1990 Subject: Humor from Dennis Ritchie (at USENIX) (Actually Dennis's latter remark was attributed by him to Rob Pike) from Unix Today 6/25 page 5. "..., Richie reminded the audience that Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that X was brain-dead and would soon die. "He was half-right," Ritchie said. "Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks." http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/133229_in-his-90-usenix-presentation-dennis-ritchie-reminded-the-audience-that-steve-jobs-stood-at-the-same-podium-a-few-years-back-and-announced-that-x-windows-was-brain-dead-and-would-soon-die.html http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/1332...