Acme vs Motif
アクメ・インターフェース / モチーフ
Both sit in Platform Screen Languages, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Acme
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Acme is the interface Rob Pike described in a 1994 paper, a hybrid of window system, shell and editor. It has no icons and no pop-up or pull-down menus; any string anywhere on screen can be executed with the middle button or opened with the right one. Windows are stacked in columns, and each is only a one line tag above a body.
Motif
Motif is the interface language of UNIX workstations, maintained by The Open Group, standardized as IEEE 1295 and shipped on more than two hundred platforms. Its own data sheet calls the look a distinctive 3D beveled appearance, meaning every part sits on a gray face edged with one light line and one dark line.
| Acme | Motif | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1994– | 1989– |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Windows are stacked in columns, and each window is just a one line tag above a body / The scroll bar sits at the left edge of the body, and nothing sits at the right / Sweeping a string with the middle button underlines it only while the button is held / The body is pale yellow and the tag pale blue, and there is not one button or icon to click | A gray face lit along its top and left edges and darkened along its bottom and right, so every part appears raised / While a control is held down the two edge colors swap and the part sinks / A thin rectangular ring is drawn around whichever control currently takes keyboard input / Scroll bars are square cornered rectangles with a triangular arrow button at each end |
| Best used for | When a working screen should stop gaining widgets and let every place you can type hold a command · When a development environment is meant to be extended by users typing commands into the tag themselves | Rebuilding a UNIX workstation era application for an exhibit or a technical write up · Building instrument or CAD controls where pressable and unpressable must read as relief rather than color |
| Type | One typeface, one size. No bold and no coloured text; state is shown by an underline and by inverted selection only. | A small sans at one fixed size, labels held to a single line, no letterspacing and no ornament inside the text. |
| Composition | Split the screen into columns and stack windows inside them. Each window is a one line tag above a body. Take no margin, and separate neighbours with a single thin rule. | Windows are cut into beveled rectangles and controls are packed a few pixels apart; there is almost no breathing room, the screen is filled with operable parts. |
| Material | Two ground colours only: pale yellow for the body, pale blue for the tag, black for the text. Underline execution in dark red and reference in dark green, and fill the centre of the small square at the left of the tag when the file has been modified. | Pick one face color, derive a light edge and a dark edge from it, and paint them on opposite sides; swap the two while pressed, and never round a corner. |
| Caution | Copy the look and turn the tag into a fixed menu, and you lose the actual mechanism, which is that any string at all can be a command. | Replacing the two hard edge colors with a soft drop shadow kills the flip that signals a press, leaving decoration that merely looks raised. |