Motif vs OPEN LOOK
モチーフ / オープンルック
Workstation screens of the same years built in gray alone, with square windows and long controls lined up.
How to tell them apart. Triangular arrows above and below the slider mean Motif. Push pins and a control split into a cable and an anchor mean OPEN LOOK.
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.
OPEN LOOK
A screen language for Unix workstations, specified by Sun Microsystems in a functional specification published by Addison-Wesley in 1989. The book defines two parallel designs, one black and white for monochrome displays and one three dimensional for grayscale and colour, sets a single sans serif variable width face for every common element, and tells implementers that restraint is the key to colour. Each pop-up window carries a pushpin at the left of its header, and pinning it leaves the window on the workspace.
| Motif | OPEN LOOK | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1989– | 1988–1990s |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| 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 | A pushpin at the left end of a pop-up window's header, which pins the window to the workspace instead of dismissing it / Three dots after a label announce a window, an outlined triangle announces a menu / Scrollbars split into an elevator, a cable and top and bottom cable anchors, with the dark part of the cable showing how much is in view / The workspace is a 50 percent dither pattern and menu drop shadows are a 75 percent pattern |
| 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 | Rebuilding a Unix workstation screen from around 1990 with a look that reads as Sun rather than Motif · Rebuilding a working screen so it survives a one bit display, using dither patterns and outlines alone |
| Type | A small sans at one fixed size, labels held to a single line, no letterspacing and no ornament inside the text. | Set every shared element in the same sans serif variable width face. Size in points rather than pixels, and scale through the 10, 12, 14 and 19 point steps the spec provides. |
| 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. | Give each window four resize corners and gather commands into control areas outside the pane. Every pop-up window opens with a header that carries a pushpin. |
| 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. | Make the design work in black and white first. For the three dimensional version pick one background colour, derive the recessed shade by adding 10 to 15 percent black, and reserve white for lit edges. |
| 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. | Starting from the three dimensional colour scheme collapses the moment the design meets a monochrome display, where neither the raised edges nor the pushpin survive. |