CLIM toolkit with MOTIF look and feel

[York@CHUCK-JONES.west.dialnet.ila.com (William M. York)]

    Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1991 15:55-0700
    From: gsmith@barracuda.arc.nasa.gov (gregory smith)

    Does a toolkit currently exist which enables Symbolics CLIM  users
    to quickly build interfaces with a MOTIF look and feel? 

The current CLIM 1.0 release does not provide much help for
integrating with Motif or producing applications with a Motif
look and feel.  However, the main technical thrust of the CLIM 2
effort is in providing an answer to this problem.

The CLIM 2 architecture supports a more toolkit or
widget-oriented approach to building applications (in addition to
the output-recording and presentation-based styles of CLIM 1).
There is a library of toolkit objects (aka "widgets", "gadgets",
"controls") such as buttons and sliders that can be put together
into the kind of dialog panels so familiar to Xtk or Mac
programmers.  One particular subset of this library, the
"adaptive gadgets", has been designed to mimic the "standard"
behavior of the set of gadgets that almost all of UI toolkits
have in common, including push buttons, toggle buttons, scroll
bars, sliders, etc.  When a CLIM application that uses these
adaptive gadgets is started in an environment for which the
appropriate integration "back-end" software has been written, the
resulting application actually uses the gadgets of the underlying
toolkit.  In environments where no toolkit hookup has been
provided, the standard CLIM implemented-in-lisp gadgets are used
instead.

We currently have prototype back-ends for Motif (using CLM) and
Open Windows (using XView).  In addition, one of our CLIM
partners (Seimens) has been working on a Lisp-to-Motif interface
package that we hope to take advantage of in the future.

Until CLIM 2 comes along (which won't be until 1992), you will
have to decide whether to switch from CLIM to CLM, weighing the
sacrifice in portability against the gain in look and feel
integration with the Motif environment.