Hello!

I would like to announce my project, DlangUI library - cross-platform GUI for D.
https://github.com/buggins/dlangui
License: Boost License 1.0

Native library written in D (not a wrapper to other GUI library) - easy to extend.
As a backend, uses SDL2 on any platform, Win32 API on Windows, XCB on Linux. Other backends can be added easy.
Tested on Windows and Linux.
Supports hardware acceleration - drawing using OpenGL when built with version=USE_OPENGL.
Unicode support.
Internationalization support.
Uses Win32 API fonts on Windows, and FreeType on other platforms.
Same look and feel can be achieved on all platforms.
Flexible look and feel - themes and styles.
API is a bit similar to Android UI.
Flexible layout, support of different screen DPI, scaling.
Uses two phase layout like in Android.
Supports drawable resources in .png and .jpeg, nine-patch pngs and state drawables like in Android.
Single threaded. Use other threads for performing slow tasks.
Mouse oriented.

Actually, it's a port (with major redesign) of my library used for cross-platform version of my application CoolReader from C++.


State of project: alpha. But, already can be used for simple 2D games and simple GUI apps.
I'm keeping in mind a goal to write D language IDE based on dlangui. :)
Adding support of 3D graphics is planned.


Currently implemented widgets:

TextWidget - simple static text (TODO: implement multiline formatting)
ImageWidget - static image
Button - simple button with text label
ImageButton - image only button
TextImageButton - button with icon and label
CheckBox - check button with label
RadioButton - radio button with label
EditLine - single line edit
EditBox - multiline editor
VSpacer - vertical spacer - just an empty widget with layoutHeight == FILL_PARENT, to fill vertical space in layouts
HSpacer - horizontal spacer - just an empty widget with layoutWidth == FILL_PARENT, to fill horizontal space in layouts
ScrollBar - scroll bar
TabControl - tabs widget, allows to select one of tabs
TabHost - container for pages controlled by TabControl
TabWidget - combination of TabControl and TabHost

Layouts - Similar to layouts in Android

LinearLayout - layout children horizontally or vertically depending on orientation
VerticalLayout - just a LinearLayout with vertical orientation
HorizontalLayout - just a LinearLayout with vertical orientation
FrameLayout - all children occupy the same place; usually onle one of them is visible
TableLayout - children are aligned into rows and columns of table

List Views - similar to lists in Android UI API.
ListWidget - layout dynamic items horizontally or vertically (one in row/column) with automatic scrollbar; can reuse widgets for similar items
ListAdapter - interface to provide data and widgets for ListWidget
WidgetListAdapter - simple implementation of ListAdapter interface - just a list of widgets (one per list item) to show


Sample project, example1 contains demo code for most of dlangui API.

Try it using DUB:

    git clone https://github.com/buggins/dlangui.git
    cd dlangui
    dub run dlangui:example1

Fonts note: on Linux, several .TTFs are loaded from hardcoded paths (suitable for Ubuntu).
TODO: add fontconfig support to access all available system fonts.

Helloworld:

// main.d
import dlangui.all;
mixin DLANGUI_ENTRY_POINT;

/// entry point for dlangui based application
extern (C) int UIAppMain(string[] args) {
    // resource directory search paths
    string[] resourceDirs = [
        appendPath(exePath, "../res/"),   // for Visual D and DUB builds
        appendPath(exePath, "../../res/") // for Mono-D builds
    ];

    // setup resource directories - will use only existing directories
    Platform.instance.resourceDirs = resourceDirs;
    // select translation file - for english language
    Platform.instance.uiLanguage = "en";
    // load theme from file "theme_default.xml"
    Platform.instance.uiTheme = "theme_default";

    // create window
    Window window = Platform.instance.createWindow("My Window", null);
    // create some widget to show in window
    window.mainWidget = (new Button()).text("Hello world"d).textColor(0xFF0000); // red text
    // show window
    window.show();
    // run message loop
    return Platform.instance.enterMessageLoop();
}

DDOC generated documentation can be found there: https://github.com/buggins/dlangui/tree/master/docs
For more info see readme and example1 code.

I would be glad to see any feedback.
Can this project be useful for someone? What features/widgets are must have for you?


Best regards,
     Vadim  <coolreader.org@gmail.com>
	

Nice work. As a guy who has worked on trying to get bindings for existing GUI libraries to work and noting all of the issues, I appreciate any effort in writing native libraries. The way I see it, wrapper libraries might possibly be as good as using the libraries from the native language some day, but they will never be better. Native D GUI libraries hold more potential for the future.

Awesome! I can't wait to try it out. Some screenshots in the
README would be much appreciated, though

On Tuesday, 20 May 2014 at 18:13:36 UTC, Vadim Lopatin wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I would like to announce my project, DlangUI library - cross-platform GUI for D.
> https://github.com/buggins/dlangui
> License: Boost License 1.0
>
> Native library written in D (not a wrapper to other GUI library) - easy to extend.
> As a backend, uses SDL2 on any platform, Win32 API on Windows, XCB on Linux. Other backends can be added easy.
> Tested on Windows and Linux.
> Supports hardware acceleration - drawing using OpenGL when built with version=USE_OPENGL.
> Unicode support.
> Internationalization support.
> Uses Win32 API fonts on Windows, and FreeType on other platforms.
> Same look and feel can be achieved on all platforms.
> Flexible look and feel - themes and styles.
> API is a bit similar to Android UI.
> Flexible layout, support of different screen DPI, scaling.
> Uses two phase layout like in Android.
> Supports drawable resources in .png and .jpeg, nine-patch pngs and state drawables like in Android.
> Single threaded. Use other threads for performing slow tasks.
> Mouse oriented.
>
> Actually, it's a port (with major redesign) of my library used for cross-platform version of my application CoolReader from C++.
>
>
> State of project: alpha. But, already can be used for simple 2D games and simple GUI apps.
> I'm keeping in mind a goal to write D language IDE based on dlangui. :)
> Adding support of 3D graphics is planned.
>
>
> Currently implemented widgets:
>
> TextWidget - simple static text (TODO: implement multiline formatting)
> ImageWidget - static image
> Button - simple button with text label
> ImageButton - image only button
> TextImageButton - button with icon and label
> CheckBox - check button with label
> RadioButton - radio button with label
> EditLine - single line edit
> EditBox - multiline editor
> VSpacer - vertical spacer - just an empty widget with layoutHeight == FILL_PARENT, to fill vertical space in layouts
> HSpacer - horizontal spacer - just an empty widget with layoutWidth == FILL_PARENT, to fill horizontal space in layouts
> ScrollBar - scroll bar
> TabControl - tabs widget, allows to select one of tabs
> TabHost - container for pages controlled by TabControl
> TabWidget - combination of TabControl and TabHost
>
> Layouts - Similar to layouts in Android
>
> LinearLayout - layout children horizontally or vertically depending on orientation
> VerticalLayout - just a LinearLayout with vertical orientation
> HorizontalLayout - just a LinearLayout with vertical orientation
> FrameLayout - all children occupy the same place; usually onle one of them is visible
> TableLayout - children are aligned into rows and columns of table
>
> List Views - similar to lists in Android UI API.
> ListWidget - layout dynamic items horizontally or vertically (one in row/column) with automatic scrollbar; can reuse widgets for similar items
> ListAdapter - interface to provide data and widgets for ListWidget
> WidgetListAdapter - simple implementation of ListAdapter interface - just a list of widgets (one per list item) to show
>
>
> Sample project, example1 contains demo code for most of dlangui API.
>
> Try it using DUB:
>
>     git clone https://github.com/buggins/dlangui.git
>     cd dlangui
>     dub run dlangui:example1
>
> Fonts note: on Linux, several .TTFs are loaded from hardcoded paths (suitable for Ubuntu).
> TODO: add fontconfig support to access all available system fonts.
>
> Helloworld:
>
> // main.d
> import dlangui.all;
> mixin DLANGUI_ENTRY_POINT;
>
> /// entry point for dlangui based application
> extern (C) int UIAppMain(string[] args) {
>     // resource directory search paths
>     string[] resourceDirs = [
>         appendPath(exePath, "../res/"),   // for Visual D and DUB builds
>         appendPath(exePath, "../../res/") // for Mono-D builds
>     ];
>
>     // setup resource directories - will use only existing directories
>     Platform.instance.resourceDirs = resourceDirs;
>     // select translation file - for english language
>     Platform.instance.uiLanguage = "en";
>     // load theme from file "theme_default.xml"
>     Platform.instance.uiTheme = "theme_default";
>
>     // create window
>     Window window = Platform.instance.createWindow("My Window", null);
>     // create some widget to show in window
>     window.mainWidget = (new Button()).text("Hello world"d).textColor(0xFF0000); // red text
>     // show window
>     window.show();
>     // run message loop
>     return Platform.instance.enterMessageLoop();
> }
>
> DDOC generated documentation can be found there: https://github.com/buggins/dlangui/tree/master/docs
> For more info see readme and example1 code.
>
> I would be glad to see any feedback.
> Can this project be useful for someone? What features/widgets are must have for you?
>
>
> Best regards,
>      Vadim  <coolreader.org@gmail.com>
> 	

Awesome.

Does this work like a conventional GUI toolkit (Gtk/Qt) or could I integrate this in an OpenGL game? (or would I have to integrate the game in it?)

On Tuesday, 20 May 2014 at 20:06:12 UTC, Kiith-Sa wrote:
> Awesome.
>
> Does this work like a conventional GUI toolkit (Gtk/Qt) or could I integrate this in an OpenGL game? (or would I have to integrate the game in it?)

Both ways available.
But I think, it's better to integrate game into it.
Otherwise you have to write more code.

> Helloworld:
>
> // main.d
> import dlangui.all;
> mixin DLANGUI_ENTRY_POINT;
>
> /// entry point for dlangui based application
> extern (C) int UIAppMain(string[] args) {
>     // resource directory search paths
>     string[] resourceDirs = [
>         appendPath(exePath, "../res/"),   // for Visual D and DUB builds
>         appendPath(exePath, "../../res/") // for Mono-D builds
>     ];
>
>     // setup resource directories - will use only existing directories
>     Platform.instance.resourceDirs = resourceDirs;
>     // select translation file - for english language
>     Platform.instance.uiLanguage = "en";
>     // load theme from file "theme_default.xml"
>     Platform.instance.uiTheme = "theme_default";
>
>     // create window
>     Window window = Platform.instance.createWindow("My Window", null);
>     // create some widget to show in window
>     window.mainWidget = (new Button()).text("Hello world"d).textColor(0xFF0000); // red text
>     // show window
>     window.show();
>     // run message loop
>     return Platform.instance.enterMessageLoop();
> }
>
> DDOC generated documentation can be found there: https://github.com/buggins/dlangui/tree/master/docs
> For more info see readme and example1 code.
>
> I would be glad to see any feedback.
> Can this project be useful for someone? What features/widgets are must have for you?
>
>
> Best regards,
>      Vadim  <coolreader.org@gmail.com>
> 	
Nice work.
Some days ago,I test the hello world ,it need 19M Memory Usage,but now,it's 31M,maybe have some error?
Thank you.
Nice work.

On Tuesday, 20 May 2014 at 22:18:14 UTC, FrankLike wrote:
> Nice work.
> Some days ago,I test the hello world ,it need 19M Memory Usage,but now,it's 31M,maybe have some error?
> Thank you.
> Nice work.
:)

Not as bad as you expected.

Tried win32 release build w/o USE_SDL and USE_OPENGL version
constants (using win32 API only).

helloworld.exe executable size 813k, memory 6.6M on start
example1.exe executable size 847k, memory 6.7M on start
As I see, memory consumption grows while app is working.
Probably, extra GC allocations, or some resources leaking.

Can be reduced a bit, e.g. by moving to libpng from libfreeimage.

Main limitation here - app needs buffer for 32bit RGBA bitmap
buffer to draw into.

Nice to hear ! Will definitely try it out !

Regarding documentation, just some notes:

> DDOC generated documentation can be found there: https://github.com/buggins/dlangui/tree/master/docs
> For more info see readme and example1 code.

You might want to store them in the "gh-pages" branch (https://pages.github.com/). That will provide you a website where you can host your pages (as versioning them will soon be very impractical to anyone cloning your repository).
Also, you may be interested by DDOX (dub --build=ddox).

On Thursday, 22 May 2014 at 04:32:27 UTC, Mathias LANG wrote:
> Nice to hear ! Will definitely try it out !
>
> Regarding documentation, just some notes:
>
>> DDOC generated documentation can be found there: https://github.com/buggins/dlangui/tree/master/docs
>> For more info see readme and example1 code.
>
> You might want to store them in the "gh-pages" branch (https://pages.github.com/). That will provide you a website where you can host your pages (as versioning them will soon be very impractical to anyone cloning your repository).
> Also, you may be interested by DDOX (dub --build=ddox).

Thank you!

Docs moved to gh-pages:

http://buggins.github.io/dlangui/index.html

Some screenshots added:

http://buggins.github.io/dlangui/screenshots.html