As expected, the Open Software Foundation has picked up new widget technology from Lotus Development Corp, IBM Corp and Digital Equipment Corp to enhance its Motif graphical user interface. The Foundation says the new widgets will offer extended personal computer-style capabilities, internationalised text editing and desktop emulation enhancements. They will go into the next release of Motif. The personal computer-style container and notebook widgets come from IBM. They enable desktop objects to be collected at a single point and emulate a paper notebook, displaying pages on the screen. Lotus’s combo box widget combines a drop-down list and a type-in text field, enabling developers to use off-the-shelf widgets instead of creating the same combination each time. From DEC’s multi-colour, multi-font text widget, users can additionally edit text from right to left.
