A minimal cross-platform C GUI library.
The major dependency needed is what the O.S provides natively.
For aesthetic reasons Linux will require some additional libraries OpenGL besides X11.
This started out first on Linux with no prior understanding of X11 programming inferface, mainly inspired by following the pattern layout in Minimal cross-platform graphics. Digging more into X11 universe, the aesthetics part seemed to be a big after thought. Plenty of info on X11 API, but no official code tutorials. The closet that has actually example code is X-windows: programming with Athena widgets.
- Began with a simplier menu layout derived from X11 Menus (how to), the source for
OpenGLdependency. - Switched to an alterative Athena Widgets/Xaw implementations toolkit, parts of this library includes various aspects of Survey of Widget Sets.
After getting a basic functional Linux startup running under WSL2. The same skeleton app needed major refactoring for Windows, API changed to be simplier and more.
- I followed the theForger's Win32 API Programming Tutorial.
- And Windows API tutorial.
Apple macOS required the most reading, and a lot of trial and error, going from objective-c to c and back. There is one question to ask Can you build a foundation with a spoon?.
- Minimalist Cocoa programming
- Cocoa in Pure C
- The Objective-C Programming Language
- Cocoa Programming/Objective-C basics
- Understanding the Objective-C Runtime
- Design of a multi-platform app
The same skeleton app overhauled to include most Apple macOS API automatic logic handling, which are shortcuts to various aspects of Cocoa examples without StoryBoard and Cocoa macOS Examples [Objective-C]. Cocoa AppKit controls without StoryBoard only by programming code (objective-c).
NOTE: The Linux and Windows API will always need refactoring to match Apple behavior. The skeleton app should have no platform specific code. Linux will be the most challenging part without resorting to GTK, Qt. I have no direct plans to add, PR are welcome. This should be must lighter and easier to follow than something like Cross-Platform C SDK - NAppGUI.
CMake FetchContent and find_package is use here to setup your project App. Your WILL need to modify every file in resources folder. The folder will be created in your root directory if it doesn't exist. This project started out inside repo Httpi, all prior commits are there. This is provided as quick way to reproduce an GUI App with little effort.
find_package(gui QUIET CONFIG)
if(NOT gui_FOUND)
FetchContent_Declare(gui
URL https://github.com/zelang-dev/c-gui/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
#URL https://github.com/zelang-dev/c-gui/archive/refs/tags/v0.0.1.zip
#URL_MD5 6e9756dee0ef5903d850dc021d5df725
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(gui)
endif()
target_include_directories(your_project
PRIVATE $<BUILD_INTERFACE:${GUI_INCLUDE_DIR} $<INSTALL_INTERFACE:${GUI_INCLUDE_DIR})
target_link_libraries(your_project PUBLIC GUI::MINI)