One of the early tenets of the X Window developers was that X should provide a
mechanism for implementing a GUI, but should not impose any policy on how that
GUI should operate. This has been both a blessing and a curse throughout the history
of X.
Since X does not define policy, the look and feel of applications has been left up to
application and toolkit developers, and there is a tremendous variation between programs.
The advantage is freedom to experiment and innovate; the disadvantage is
confusion for users.
On one of my systems, I have three different calculators available: xcalc, kcalc, and
gnome-calculator, as shown in Figure 1-2.
As you can see from this screen dump, each calculator looks different: the fonts, colors,
button sizes, menu options, icons, and status bar vary from program to program.
They also use different visual effects when buttons are pressed.
Fortunately, the toolkit developers have assumed responsibility for many policy
issues, and programs based on the same toolkit generally operate in a consistent way.
Programs using different toolkits still behave differently, but the most popular toolkits
have converged in their look and feel; notice the similarities between the 3D buttons
and the fonts used by kcalc (center) and gnome-calculator (right).
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