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Is it better to write one own's GUI in this case? I believe most toolkits have a way to add new controls, so it should be less work to add a knob to GtK, Qt or any other toolkit.

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True, you could write a new Qt control.

Then you hit the second requirement: complete bitmap theming, many times of a skeuomorphic kind. This is extremely difficult to do in something like Gtk/Qt.

Behold, in all its skeuomorphic glory, the Qt styles example:

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwidgets-widgets-styles-example.html

That looks almost exactly like Motif from 1991, but superimposed with a wood grain pattern.

Looks more like Windows 9x than Motif to me.

1. Motif came first. Among people who knew what Motif is, the look of Windows 95 was widely recognized as being very similar to Motif to the point of being a knock-off.

2. See the diamond-shaped radio buttons in the second example. :)

3. 3D embossed arrows on scroll bars.

Oh, I didn't see the second screenshot. Yeah that one is more like what I remember Motif looking like. The first one though is definitely going for the Windows 95 look.

Qt has the following style that you can use, where you just have to ship the bitmaps for your controls in a predefined naming scheme : https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquickcontrols2-imagine.html

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