Motif vs Oberon System Interface
モチーフ / オベロン・システムの画面
Both sit in Platform Screen Languages, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is style and the other layout. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
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.
Oberon System Interface
The screen of the system Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht built at ETH between 1986 and 1989. Windows never overlap: the display is split into vertical tracks and each track is tiled top to bottom. Any text anywhere on the screen can be run as a command if it reads M.P and you click it with the middle button, so the system needs no menu widget at all.
| Motif | Oberon System Interface | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1989– | 1988– |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Layout |
| Cues | 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 | Nothing overlaps: the display is cut into vertical tracks first, then tiled top to bottom inside each track / A narrow track on the right holds a log above and a text of commands below, with the wide working track on the left / A one line title bar across the top of every viewer, carrying the document name and commands such as System.Close as plain text / One bit per pixel, black on white, with borders drawn as single lines and no shadow, rounding or grey |
| Best used for | 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 | Designing a workspace that gives up overlapping windows, where placement is decided by only two moves: which track, and where in that track · Giving a product a command list the user can rewrite, held as an ordinary editable text instead of a dedicated menu component |
| Type | A small sans at one fixed size, labels held to a single line, no letterspacing and no ornament inside the text. | Set commands in the same face and size as body text. Name them M.P and spell them out as words, Copy and Rename rather than cp and rn. |
| Composition | 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. | Cut the display into vertical tracks and divide each track horizontally. Never overlap. Keep a narrow right hand track for the log and the command text and leave the left wide. Give every viewer a one line title bar. |
| Material | 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. | One bit, black on white. Single pixel rules, no shadow, no rounded corners, no greys and no colour. Mark the insertion point with a hook. |
| Caution | Replacing the two hard edge colors with a soft drop shadow kills the flip that signals a press, leaving decoration that merely looks raised. | Copying the tiling without the rule that any text on screen is executable forces the menu bar and the buttons back in, and all that is left is a cramped layout. |