microui
pacman.c
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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.
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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:
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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
- 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
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Seeking your expert opinion and advice for an OpenGL client-server rendering framework
What about GUI like this: https://github.com/rxi/microui?
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Easy to implement GUI for SDL 2
If you are using SDL with SDL_Renderer, try microui
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What is your own favorite C project?
In terms of other people's projects: stb, microui, and nanovg come to mind
pacman.c
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What is your own favorite C project?
Some of my favorites are: sokol/pacman.c, Gunslinger, and gb
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Zig in 30 Minutes
Not "serious" at all but I wrote a Pacman clone over the holidays as an excercise and test for my cross-platform C header bindinds:
https://github.com/floooh/pacman.zig
...and before that I did the same in C99 (might be useful for comparing the languages):
https://github.com/floooh/pacman.c
Disclaimer: I'm not a Zig expert at all, and the project doesn't really require most things where Zig differs from C. But I think writing small and "for-fun" projects like this is important for getting used to a language. I think one of Zig's big qualities is that it is so straightforward, after a few hundred lines you hardly have to look up things in the language documentation anymore.
What are some alternatives?
imgui - Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ with minimal dependencies
sokol - minimal cross-platform standalone C headers
nanovg - Antialiased 2D vector drawing library on top of OpenGL for UI and visualizations.
pixeltoaster - PixelToaster is a framebuffer library for C++
minifb - MiniFB is a small cross platform library to create a frame buffer that you can draw pixels in
nuklear
gunslinger - C99, header-only framework for games and multimedia applications
rotate - [WIP] static typed programming language that compiles to vm bytecode
pns
astera - A C99 Cross Platform 2D Game Library
nuklear - A single-header ANSI C immediate mode cross-platform GUI library