Xaw-Xpm (a hack
of Xaw3d).
Ben Buxton bb@zip.com.au
The original version of the Athena Widget Set is ugly. That was improved considerably with Xaw3d, which gave it a motif look and feel. I've hacked it even further now, and it has numerous aesthetic improvements, as well as the ability to put colour background pixmaps (images) into almost every widget.
Version 1.0b only had the pixmap feature in it, whilst in this version I went and made numerous other improvements, which makes it a great replacement even without pixmaps.
I call this the better than Motif look and feel widget set.
With appropriate images, you can have very nice looking Xaw based apps,
especially if you combine it with Rastermans
Enlightenmentwindow manager.
I intend to make Xaw-Xpm a complete project which improves the look of
Xaw to beyond that of any other GUI widget set, and have added such
features as shaped widgets (extending way beyond the current simple shapes),
bordered text, sound, etc.
I soon hope to recode some common Xaw-based applications to take better advantage
of Xaw-Xpm, just like there are some that are modified for Xaw3d.
Standard X resources are used in setting the pixmaps, allowing you to
set them in your .Xdefaults (or .Xresources) file. You can also change
them dynamically with editres. If you dont know how to do any of
these, then I suggest you RTFM. As an example, this resource will set
the background pixmap for every button in Xedit:
xedit*Command.pixmapName: /usr/local/pixmaps/marble3.xpmYou need the Xpm library to compile/run Xaw-Xpm. It's available at most X mirrors. Xaw-Xpm has been tested to run on Linux, and should also compile/run on any other flavour of Unix supporting the Xpm library.
Here are a couple of screenshots of Xaw-Xpm.
Don't forget that if you don't like the pixmaps here, you can always put your own pixmaps in...so you've got no excuse for saying it's no good. :)
If you've got a good Xaw-Xpm setup, mail me screenshots :)
| Resource | Description | Used in |
| pixmapName | Filename of pixmap used for the normal background of the widget. |
Almost every widget :) |
| hlPixmap | Filename of pixmap used for the 'highlight' state of the widget. ie when the mouse pointer is over it. |
Command, Toggle, MenuButton, Others based on Command. |
| setPixmap | Pixmap to be used for the 'set' state of a widget, ie when it's pressed |
Command, Toggle |
| thumbPixmap | Pixmap used for the thumb (slider) of scrollbars |
Scrollbar |
| sliderPixmap | Pixmap to be used for the slider of the Panner widget (the thing in editres :) |
Panner | New since version 1.0b
|
| pixDir | Directory to search for pixmaps. Current directory is also searched |
Widgets that use pixmaps |
| doubleArrow | Whether to use an Amiga/NeXt style double arrow scrollbar |
Scrollbar |
| thumbMargin | Distance between scrollbar thumb and outer shadows |
Scrollbar |
| showSliderMark | Whether to show a 3d 'grip on scrollbar sliders |
Scrollbar |
| notifySound | Filename of .au file to play to /dev/audio when button has been pressed and released |
Command, Toggle Repeater, SmeBSB |
| armSound | .au file to play when button has been pressed in |
Command, Toggle, Repeater |
| hlSound | .au file to play when widget is highlighted. ie has the pointer over it |
Command, Toggle, MenuButton, etc |
| drawTextBorder | Whether to draw a 1 pixel wide outline around widget text |
Label, Command, Toggle,MenuButton SmeBSB |
| textBorder | Colour of widget text border | Same as for drawTextBorder |
| shaped | Whether to shape the widget | Label,Command Toggle, etc |
| shapeMask | Filename of .xpm file used to determine widget shape. Uses 'pixmapName' if unspecified |
Same as for shaped |
| downSound | .au file to play when menu goes away. (Pops down) |
SimpleMenu |
| upSound | .au file to play when menu appears | SimpleMenu |
| showGroove | Whether to show a groove down the trough |
Scrollbar |
| showArrows | Whether to show end arrows | Scrollbar |
Without and with Xaw-Xpm...which is better? (The one with I hope!:)
Efficiency of Xaw-Xpm.
Xaw-Xpm uses an efficient algorithm whereby a pixmap will only ever be loaded once, even if multiple widgets use it. This saves *masses* of memory, which would totally thrash your system if it had to load them for every widget.
The core X11 widget base does have a 'backgroundPixmap' resource, which when set will set a widget's background to that pixmap. However, the pixmaps for that can only be created in the code of the application, and thus Xaw-Xpm's primary feature is that you can set the background pixmaps in a user environment, ie you dont have to code the pixmaps in, and thus dont need to recompile your applications.
NOTE - If you want to use pixmaps and only have an 8 bit display, you should be careful
as you can run out of colours.
A number of pixmaps and sample resource files are included, with the setups similar to the ones in the screenshots above. The sample resources file that it comes with is here. See how easy it is to use? :)
New features since 1.0b
I've made significant improvements and fixes in Xaw-Xpm, which I've finally released. Below is a list of some of the improvements:
If you want to see any other improvements, feel free to drop me a line.
The archive comes with sample pixmaps and resources. I suggest you download the that links to sunsite.unc.edu as this will be faster, unless you are in Australia. Both archives contain a Linux/ELF binary.
Download Xaw-XPM-1.1.tar.gz with sample setups/pixmaps (1.4Mb from sunsite).
Download Xaw-XPM-1.1.tar.gz (From Zip, in .au)
Thanks to all those who offered suggestions, comments, etc, and especially to Rasterman for extensive testing and ideas.
Enjoy! :)
Known bugs/problemsSome apps that create their own 'composite' widgets at compile time, such as xxgdb, xarchie, xclock and others might need recompiling with XawXpm and its include files, otherwise they may core dump. This is not a bug in XawXpm as such, but a side-effect of the modified widget structures.
If your system isnt recognising the library (eg you get 'can't load library libXaw.so.6'), try putting a symlink to the library in /usr/lib called libXaw.so.6:
# ls -l /usr/X11R6/lib/libXaw.so.6 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 30 13:58 /usr/X11R6/lib/libXaw.so.6 -> libXaw.so.6.0* # cd /usr/lib # ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libXaw.so.6 # ls -l libXaw.so.6 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Nov 30 03:28 libXaw.so.6 -> /usr/X11R6/lib/libXaw.so.6
Links
Here are a few cool things, some of them relate to XawXpm and the quest to beautify the linux/X11 desktop. :)
Contact me by email (bb@zip.com.au)
or as rifleman on #zip (IceNet - /server irc.icenet.org)
Ignore this spam tarpit though if you're a human.
29 Nov 96
Virtually the best ISP. :)
