Object-Oriented Programming with C++ and OSF/Motif

This is the first edition of this classic work. Douglas Young implemented a "light" C++ approach toward wrapping the Motif library. It's very effective, especially for 1992. This is the approach supported by the "X-Designer" toolkit sold by IST. However, the 1995 Second Edition implements a very nice, simple "template" for storing lists of Motif Widgets which simplifies the code dramatically. Still, if you need to support an early "legacy" C++/Motif application, this book's approach is still very good.

The book is very good, but don't expect for a tutorial on Motif and/or C++ for newcomers. Although it contains a tutorialchapter, most of the text covers the nuts and bolts of buildingan object oriented application framework. You must have someprevious knowledge on OO concepts to understand it. Have the Motif reference manual at hand too.

How to encapsulate a non object oriented gui library with C++ is shown here. X11/Motif can handle only callbacks for pointers to functions and not to methods. Besides a lot of instructive examples, the main issue of interest is to show how to make XT callbacks work for C++ methods. The trick is to give a "this" pointer as an extra agrument to the XtAddCallback function, concealed as an XtPointer (which is a void pointer). This still goes to a function, possibly a static function in a class, which then has to cast back the XtPointer and call the final method. The book is nicely made. Still, X11/Xt/Motif is a nightmare. If one has any choice, then the modern qt library is much much better. If one needs to use Motif, than books as this one are very helpful.

We used the basis of this book to handle the user interface on a large planning program for NASA. I am sure we saved thousands of lines of code!