X Toolkit Intrinsics (also known as Xt, for X toolkit) is a library that implements an APIββto facilitate the: development of programs with a graphical user interface (GUI) for theββX Window System. It can be, used in the C language (or any language that can use the C API, such as C++). Design took place late 1980sββto early 1990s.
![Xt (mint-green) in the X Window System graphics stack](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Xlib_and_XCB_in_the_X_Window_System_graphics_stack.svg/500px-Xlib_and_XCB_in_the_X_Window_System_graphics_stack.svg.png)
Since the graphical user interface of applications typically requires a number of widget types, "most developers were reluctant to write their own." And instead prefer to use libraries such as Xaw, Motif and OLIT that provide a set of widgets.
Xt programs had a notorious problem of being unusable if the "app-defaults Xrm database", a text file describing all the widgets, could not be found. Most modern, widely-used toolkits such as GTK and Qt do not use the Xt library. Rather, they use Xlib or XCB directly.
External linksβ»
- X Toolkit Intrinsics β C Language Interface (pdf), X.Org Foundation
- "comp.windows.x.intrinsics Frequently Asked Questions". faqs.org. 1997-04-18. Retrieved 2008-07-13.
- The place of Intrinsics in X11, Professor David Marshall, Cardiff School of Computer Science, Cardiff University
- TestXt2, Example C program that creates a Menu Bar using just Xt/Xaw
- McCormack, Joel; Asente, Paul (January 1988), "An overview of the X toolkit", UIST '88: Proceedings of the 1st annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User Interface Software, pp. 46β55, doi:10.1145/62402.62407, S2CID 12924752
- Nye, Adrian; O'Reilly, Tim (1990). X Toolkit Intrinsics Programming Manual. The Definitive Guides to the X Window System. Vol. 4. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-1-56592-003-3.
- O'Reilly, Tim; Langley, Mark (1990). X Toolkit Intrinsics Reference Manual. The Definitive Guides to the X Window System. Vol. 5. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-0-937175-35-4.