Major update to Motif GUI toolkit

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Author: JT Smith

Mark Hatch writes “Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. (ICS) announced today that it has
released Open Motif 2.2. Open Motif is the publicly licensed version of Motif, the industry standard user interface toolkit for UNIX® systems (IEEE 1295).”Mark Hatch writes”Industry Standard Toolkit for User Interfaces Updated.

Open Motif 2.2 and Release Roadmap Result from Availability to Open Source Community

New York, NY — January 29, 2002 — Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. (ICS), the leading
supplier of user interface development tools for professionals, announced today that it has
released Open Motif 2.2. Open Motif is the publicly licensed version of Motif, the industry
standard user interface toolkit for UNIX® systems (IEEE 1295). In addition, ICS has released
an 18-month roadmap that defines the next three versions of Open Motif. This announcement
builds on an earlier announcement by ICS of Embedded Open Motif, a version of Motif
optimized for embedded and handheld systems.

“We released Open Motif to the Open Source community for the dual benefit of increasing use of
Motif and growing the number of applications to benefit the end-user,” said Allen Brown,
President and CEO of The Open Group. “We welcome and embrace ICS’s contributions, and
have incorporated them into the reference release of Open Motif 2.2. The Open Group also plans
to work with ICS to produce an update to the commercial version of Motif based on the ICS
contributions. These initiatives ensure that Motif continues to be a growing and useful standard
for enterprise application development.”

Open Motif 2.2 adds ToolTips ? popup hints that appear when the pointer rests over a button,
menu or other user interface control ? to all existing Motif widgets. ICS has also added 10 new
widgets to Open Motif including: support for tabbed user interfaces, tree style layout,
validating data entry fields, and toolbars. Enterprise developer input was the critical factor in
ICS adding these widgets to Open Motif.

“Since Motif was made publicly available, ICS has been inundated with downloads and feature
requests,” said Peter Winston, President of ICS. “The release of Open Motif 2.2 and its associated
Roadmap continues our commitment to enterprise developers who need the reliability,
performance and functionality of Motif.”

Open Motif 2.2 Updates to be Made Available for UNIX Systems

ICS will make the Open Motif 2.2 updates available as a commercial Motif product on UNIX
workstations including Sun, SGI, IBM, HP and Compaq. This will allow developers to use the
latest Motif enhancement on both Open Source systems as well as their UNIX based systems.
First customer shipment of ICS’s commercial version of Motif will occur in April 2002.

Motif Roadmap

ICS has also made available the following Open Motif roadmap:

  • Q3/2002: Open Motif 2.3 will provide imaging support to Motif for commonly available
    formats (jpgs, png, etc.). The XmCanvas widget will be added to provide a powerful
    structured graphical display tool.
  • Q1/2003: Open Motif 2.4 will provide support for anti-aliased fonts. In addition, several
    more widgets will be added including tables and graphs.
  • Q3/2003: Open Motif 2.5 will improve C++ support.
  • Six City Tour Offers Free Training on Open Motif 2.2

    In March, ICS and the MotifZone (http://www.motifzone.net) will provide developers with free
    training classes on Open Motif 2.2 in Philadelphia, Washington DC, Houston, Denver, Los
    Angeles, and Boston. More details on this free training can be found at
    http://www.ics.com/seminars .

    About Motif

    Motif is the industry standard graphical user interface toolkit, (IEEE 1295). It is used on more
    than 200 hardware and software platforms including Compaq, HP, IBM, Linux, SGI, and Sun. It
    provides application developers, end users, and system integrators with the industry’s most
    widely used environment for multi-platform graphical applications. Motif is the leading user
    interface for the UNIX based operating system.

    Open Motif is the publicly licensed version of Motif. The official Open Motif home web page is
    at http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/ . ICS hosts the official development tree for Open Motif
    at the MotifZone (http://www.motifzone.net)

    Commercial Motif is the release of Open Motif for traditional UNIX workstations such as those
    offered by Sun, SGI, IBM, HP and Compaq. ICS offers Commercial Motif to maintain
    compatibility with Open Motif.

    Embedded Open Motif is the lightweight distribution of Open Motif geared towards embedded
    and handheld systems.

    About ICS

    Founded in 1987, ICS was chartered to create software development tools for developers working
    with the then emerging X Window System?. The company’s first product offerings included X
    training and a version of Motif for systems manufactured by Sun Microsystems. Prior to
    widespread adoption of Motif by the UNIX workstation vendors, ICS was the leading
    independent shipper of the Motif toolkit. In 1998, The Open Group chose ICS to provide
    technical support for its Motif source code licenses.

    Today, ICS is the current market leader in Motif graphical user interface development tools. It’s
    flagship product, Builder Xcessory, is in its fifth major release and represents over 100 person
    years of effort. BX defines a level of sophistication, functionality and ease-of-use that is
    unmatched in the industry.

    ICS sponsors the MotifZone (http://www.motifzone.net), a community site for Motif developers
    to gather additional knowledge and request input on technical problems from other engineers. The
    MotifZone hosts the Public CVS source code repository for Open Motif as well as the defect
    database. The MotifZone hosts over 5000 active developers, has delivered almost 100,000
    downloads of Open Motif, and experiences over 5 million hits per year. It is the most active
    website dedicated to user interface software development.

    For further information on ICS, its products or services, call 617-621-0060, or visit the ICS
    website at http://www.ics.com .

    Press Contacts:

    Amy Zinkann

    ICS

    617-621-0060 x192

    amy@ics.com

    UNIX and Motif are registered trademarks of The Open Group in the US and other countries. The Open Group and the X Window
    System are trademarks of The Open Group. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
    All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.