1.8
10 Chapter 1: Introduction to the X Window System
One more thing to note in Figure 1-2: each window??™s title bar, border, and window
controls are the same??”because they are being drawn by the window manager, not
the individual application programs.
1.8 Toolkits and Desktop Environments
There are three main toolkits currently in use, and desktop environments have been
based upon each one:
Most of these desktop environments are distributed with a display manager, window
manager, and some application clients, but you can mix and match components
from different environments. The use of one desktop environment does not
prevent you from using applications built with another toolkit or distributed with
another desktop environment, so you can use KDE along with GTK+ apps, or Xfce
with Motif applications.
Almost all new development is now based on the GTK+ and Qt toolkits, primarily
because they are open source (http://opensource.org) and therefore more accessible to
developers.
However, Motif continues to be an important toolkit for legacy applications,
especially in some financial and scientific niche markets. Motif and OpenMotif are
Figure 1-2. xcalc, kcalc, and gnome-calculator
Toolkit
Original
programming
language License Open source
Desktops built
with this toolkit
GTK+ C GPL Yes Gnome, Xfce
Qt C++ GPL Yes KDE
Motif/OpenMotif C Open Group Master
Software License/Open
Group Public License
No CDE
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