Editing Graphical widget (section)

== History ==
{{further|History of the graphical user interface}}

Around 1920, ''widget'' entered American English, as a generic term for any useful device, particularly a product manufactured for sale; a [[gadget]].

In 1988, the term ''widget'' is attested in the context of [[Project Athena]] and the [[X Window System]]. In ''An Overview of the [[X Toolkit Intrinsics|X Toolkit]]'' by [[Joel McCormack]] and Paul Asente, it says:<ref>{{cite book |last1=McCormack |first1=Joel |last2=Asente |first2=Paul |title=Proceedings of the 1st annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User Interface Software |chapter=An overview of the X toolkit |date=1988 |pages=46–55 |doi=10.1145/62402.62407 |isbn=0897912837 |s2cid=12924752 |chapter-url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/62402.62407}}</ref>
<blockquote>
The toolkit provides a library of user-interface components ("widgets") like text labels, scroll bars, command buttons, and menus; enables programmers to write new widgets; and provides the glue to assemble widgets into a complete user interface.
</blockquote>

The same year, in the manual ''X Toolkit Widgets - C Language X Interface'' by Ralph R. Swick and Terry Weissman, it says:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Swick |first1=Ralph R. |last2=Weissman |first2=Terry |title=X Toolkit Widgets - C Language X Interface |date=1988 |page=[https://archive.org/details/x-window-system/page/n49 1] |url=https://archive.org/details/x-window-system/page/n45}}</ref>
<blockquote>
In the X Toolkit, a widget is the combination of an X window or sub window and its associated input and output semantics.
</blockquote>

Finally, still in the same year, Ralph R. Swick and Mark S. Ackerman explain where the term ''widget'' came from:<ref>{{cite conference
 |author=Ralph R. Swick, Mark S. Ackerman
 |title=The X Toolkit: More Bricks for Building User-Interfaces –or– Widgets for Hire
 |book-title=USENIX Winter
 |pages=221–228
 |year=1988
 |url=http://www-ftp.lip6.fr/ftp/pub/distributed_systems/athena/xtk.PS
 |access-date=2022-11-20
 }}</ref>
<blockquote>
We chose this term since all other common terms were overloaded with inappropriate connotations. We offer the observation to the skeptical, however, that the principal realization of a widget is its associated X window and the common initial letter is not un-useful.
</blockquote>