microui
harfbuzz
microui | harfbuzz | |
---|---|---|
13 | 33 | |
3,115 | 3,592 | |
- | 1.5% | |
0.0 | 9.8 | |
4 months ago | 4 days ago | |
C | C++ | |
MIT License | GNU General Public License v3.0 or later |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
microui
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Immediate Mode GUI Programming
There is also microui, which I like[0].
Which I forked to work with SDL2[1], no guarantees. It's fun to hack on.
[0]https://github.com/rxi/microui
[1]https://github.com/kennethrapp/microui
- MicroUI: Tiny immediate-mode UI library
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What should I use to make GUI with SDL
Otherwise, https://github.com/rxi/microui is small enough that you can hack around. Look at the issue though, there's a bit of unaligned access there.
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ImGui or text rendering libraries
For GUI, there are lots, most well-known of course being Dear Imgui, for which people have made auto-generated C bindings. Another mature but a lot simpler option is Nuklear, as others have mentioned. Even more minimalistic (it's just 1KLOC) is microui. There are a lot more, just google "imgui library c".
- A lightweight, simple, fast, feature-filled, text editor written in C, and Lua
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Nuklear – A single-header ANSI C immediate mode cross-platform GUI library
The price for the 'lightest' UI toolkit probably goes to microui:
https://github.com/rxi/microui
Just around 1100 lines of C code.
You need to bring your own renderer, but that's the same for Nuklear or Dear ImGui.
I wrote a WASM wrapper for the microui demo too:
https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/sgl-microui-sapp.html
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I made a shortlist of good libraries for my GUI C project and I want your thoughts and comments.
Good C library list: https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/links/libs https://github.com/Immediate-Mode-UI/Nuklear + C89, no dependencies, public license. 5/5 https://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/ + good tutorial and wiki guides 5/5 https://libsdl.org/ + infinite possibilities - whole library for making games, forums, wiki - complicated, not many C tutorials, need to manage game states... 4/5 https://github.com/lvgl/lvgl + good docs - for embedded systems 4/5 https://github.com/ocornut/imgui + Popular, inspired Nuklear - for C++ 3/5 https://docs.enlightenment.org/api/imlib2/html/ + very efficient, used in Conky - uses X so only for Linux, just for displaying images and text and stuff 2/5 https://github.com/rxi/microui + simple, small - you need to handle your own drawing 2/5 GTK+ - no
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I haven't been using Linux that much yet, but because of my experience with Xfce, and because others don't seem to enjoy desktop environments on Linux too much, I want to create my own.
Really? Here's a minimal UI with I believe less LOC than Suckless DWM. It's not a full DE, but I imagine you could probably turn it into one without adding that much more code.
- Best way to write a cross-platform graphical program in C while using only bare minimum third-party libraries?
- resources for making a gui library
harfbuzz
- HarfBuzz: Text Shaping Engine
- Rive Renderer – now open source and available on all platforms
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Libsodium: A modern, portable, easy to use crypto library
For C/C++ projects that use meson as the build system, there is an excellent way to manage dependencies:
https://mesonbuild.com/Wrapdb-projects.html
https://mesonbuild.com/Wrap-dependency-system-manual.html
meson will download and build the libraries automatically and give you a variable which you pass as a regular dependency into the built target:
https://github.com/qemu/qemu/tree/005ad32358f12fe9313a4a0191...
https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/tree/main/subprojects
https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/37457412b3212463c5...
Or, if you're using proper operating systems, they're managed by the usual package manager, just like everything else.
- The Web Assembly Shaper
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Text Rendering Hates You
If you sympathize with the travails of people working on text rendering in applications, please consider supporting (among other projects):
1. The LibreOffice project (libreoffice.org), the free office application suite. This is where the rubber hits the road and developers deal with the extreme complexities of everything regarding text - shaping, styling, multi-object interaction, multi-language, you name it. And - they/we absolutely need donations to manage a project with > 200 million users: https://www.libreoffice.org/donate
2. harfbuzz (https://harfbuzz.github.io), and specifically Behdad Esfahood the main contributor. Although, TBH, I've not quite figured out whether you can donate to that or to him. At least star the project on GitHub I guess.
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ImGui or text rendering libraries
As for text, it depends very heavily on what exactly you need. Simple ASCII text and bitmap fonts? Just do it yourself or get a .bdf parser. Simple Latin/Cyrillic-like writing with ok-looking vector fonts (ttfs)? stb_truetype has all you need. Font hinting, subpixel rendering? You use freetype. More complex writing like Arabic? You will have to do shaping as well, say with HarfBuzz. Need right-to-left or unidirectional text? Hypenation? Go for platform APIs if you can (DirectWrite om Windows, CoreText on Mac).
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QuestPDF: Modern .NET library for PDF document generation
Gold standard? Even though serious bugs are not fixed [1] because "the code is too fragile to touch at this point"? Looks like Android uses HarfBuzz, if so it can't be that bad.
[1] https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/2814
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A Programmable Markup Language for Typesetting [pdf]
The linked libraries are not even close to solving limited subsets of problems solved by FreeType or HarfBuzz. No test is needed if they do not even have a working implementation of particular requisites: Do they work on heterogeneous layouts, directions, languages, locales, scripts, symbols and composites, extensions, variations, legacy, missing, partial or corrupted instructions, standards interpretations, platforms, output devices, nonstandard point structures and grids?
They do not. What they solve is almost a toy problem compared to the size, scope and breadth of these libraries.
Just because some project is implemented in Rust does not make it comparable never mind superior by default.
There is a world out there and it is not homogeneous format and standards-compliant Latin fonts in English LTR text in linear disposition with some generic rectangular subpixel rendering on a regular rectangular grid.
I warmly welcome you to browse closed issues of FreeType [1] and also the closed issues of HarfBuzz [2]. If you feel inspired please do also look into mailing lists and discussion pages related to the development, building, tracking and patching of packages of these projects in any of the numerous places it is used.
The only argument Rust people have is in relation WASM but if you insist in targeting WASM why not fork FreeType, strip it to the strict subset of features your application needs and target it?
Why do it in the first place? Why reinvent the wheel?
As such I will restate my view: I see no gain in using any of these subpar libraries.
[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/freetype/freetype/-/issues/?s...
[2] https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues?q=is%3Aclosed
- Harfbuzz 6.0
What are some alternatives?
imgui - Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ with minimal dependencies
imgui-sfml - Dear ImGui backend for use with SFML
sokol - minimal cross-platform standalone C headers
nanovg - Antialiased 2D vector drawing library on top of OpenGL for UI and visualizations.
contour - Modern C++ Terminal Emulator
pixeltoaster - PixelToaster is a framebuffer library for C++
c-ares - A C library for asynchronous DNS requests
minifb - MiniFB is a small cross platform library to create a frame buffer that you can draw pixels in
imgui_sdl - ImGuiSDL: SDL2 based renderer for Dear ImGui
nuklear
Tehreer-Android - Standalone text engine for Android aimed to be free from platform limitations