Xgui is a GUI library for Linux based on Xlib and several extensions.
The goal of the library is to use only Xlib and X extensions for as long as possible, aka being able to compile it on pretty much any Linux installation with a more or less modern X server. Current requirements are:
Xlib- base libraryXft- FreeType supportXrender- antialiased renderingXext- additional extensions (e.g.Xdbefor double-buffering support)
As for now, this library can't be used for real-world application because of lack of widgets - I've been mainly working on the TextView widget, which is required for another project I am working on, based on this library - a text editor for writers. In the future I am planning on adding quite a couple more widgets, like Label, ImageView, etc.
Compatibility with later/earlier versions is not guaranteed as library is still in heavy development. Once I have enough base functionality and widgets I will of course try to maintain API compatibility, but probably not ABI compatibility.
Library requires a little setting up before usage, namely, executing genkeycodes-x which is a Python script to generate KeyCodes.hpp from <X11/keysymdef.h>. KeyCodes.hpp is a temporary file used to profile keycode access to applications. In the future I am going to replace it with a smaller and easier to use version.
To understand how the library works it is advised to go thru the source code and check out test programs in the tests/ folder. General idea is:
- You call
Xgui::init()which initializes the library - You create widgets, bind callbacks, etc
- You either call
Xgui::run()and obtain the exit code or you keep callingXgui::wait()in a loop
Xgui::run() will enter a mainloop that listens for events. If you don't want the program to enter a loop you can instead call Xgui::wait() which will process only the next event and then return a code, with -1 meaning success and anything else being the return code for the application (means all the widgets were destroyed).
Any ideas of how this library can be improved are very welcome! Also any info about optimizing any of the widgets (especially TextView) would be really great.