pugl-ui – a stub for small embeddable GUI-toolkits using pugl

pugl is a minimal portable API for embeddable GUIs https://gitlab.com/lv2/pugl/

This crate aims to provide a stub for GUI-toolkits using pugl

Goal

Stub for small light weight self contained GUI toolkits, especially to implement UIs of LV2 plugins. GUIs for LV2 plugins need to be self contained, i.e. they should be statically linked and must not dynamically link any other GUI toolkit. Otherwise symbols of the same GUI toolkit in different versions used by different plugins running in the same host would clash.

There is the crate pugl-sys which is the wrapper around the pugl library. This crate provides widget layout and event propagation.

It does not, however, provide the widgets themselves. In the LV2 world many plugin authors write their own widget sets with their distinct look and feel as they are part of the authors corporate identity.

Status

Kind of beta testing stage. Currently only tested on Linux/X11

API stability

Before reaching the 1.0.0 release, incompatible API changes can happen. There is no large base of applications using pugl-ui as of yet. So experience with the API is limited. The 1.0.0 release will not happen before several developers have used pugl-ui for real life applications and given feedback.

If it turns out that there is a better way to design the API it will be done. It is somewhat likely, that the API will change towards more convenient use, as more practical experience is collected.

Especially because the API differs from usual object oriented approaches of GUI programming. The design patterns used in object oriented GUI programming, most prominently the observer pattern and model view controller, don't work in proper safe Rust, as shared mutable references are needed to implement them.

Todo

• More complete documentation

However I am reluctant to put too much effort into documenting when the API is not stable. So first I will write some LV2 Plugins to see if everything works convenient. So if there is documentation missing to a certain module, chances are, that the API will change.

Applications using pugl-ui

• Envolvigo