XView - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Widget toolkit

In computing, a widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces...

from Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

introduced in 1988. It provides an OPEN LOOK

OPEN LOOK

OPEN LOOK is a graphical user interface specification for UNIX workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T.-History:...

user interface for X Window System

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

applications, with an object-oriented application programming interface

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

(API) for the C programming language

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

. Its interface, controls, and layouts are very close to that of the earlier SunView

SunView

SunView was a windowing system from Sun Microsystems developed in the early 1980s. It was included as part of SunOS, Sun's UNIX implementation; unlike later UNIX windowing systems, much of it was implemented in the system kernel...

window system, making it easy to convert existing applications from SunView to X. Sun also produced the User Interface Toolkit

User Interface Toolkit

User Interface Toolkit was a C++ programming language, object-oriented layer atop the XView graphical toolkit. It was developed by Sun Microsystems employees Mark Soloway and Joe Warzecha as an internal tools project for Sun's Computer Integrated Manufacturing organization in 1990.In 1991,...

(UIT), a C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

API to XView.

The XView source code has been freely available since the early 1990s, making it the "first open-source professional-quality X Window System toolkit". XView was later abandoned by Sun in favor of Motif

Motif (widget toolkit)

In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...

(the basis of CDE

Common Desktop Environment

The Common Desktop Environment is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif widget toolkit.- Corporate history :...

), and more recently GTK+

GTK+

GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...

(the basis of GNOME

GNOME

GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

).

XView was reputedly the first system to use right-button context menu

Context menu

A context menu is a menu in a graphical user interface that appears upon user interaction, such as a right mouse click or middle click mouse operation...

s, which are now ubiquitous among computer user interfaces.

Further reading