RustUI

Rust GUI library inspired by SwiftUI.

This library emphasises the usage of declarative syntax for clean & simple UI development.

Read the project writeup

Disclaimer

This project was created as a means of exploring declarative UI syntax.
RustUI is not intended for real-world use.
I created RustUI to learn Rust, SDL2, and to explore UI libraries. Much refactoring is needed for further development.

Examples

See testing.rs for library capabilities and syntax.
Note that you will need a custom bitmap image to replace both instances of "temp_logo_low_quality.bmp" (simply change that string to the new image path).

Testing Binaries

Different executables can be tested by including them in /src/bin.
Run them via cargo run --bin file_name
For simplification, a script can be created to enter this command and any parameters.

Current Standing

Early development

Dependencies

The following items are required to run RustUI projects:

• SDL2
  • SDL2
• SDL2_ttf
  • SDL2_ttf
  • libfreetype-6
  • zlib1

Usage (unstable)

Windows

Download the above dependencies and place into project root directory (with Cargo.toml)

Linux

Check for distribution-specific development packages/repos for the required libraries

General

1. When using text, place the .ttf font in /res/font/
2. In font.rs, update default_font for the FontParams struct

TODOs:

• See Projects
• Font Management:
  • When a font is needed, query font map
  • if not found, load font and store for future use
  • 90% of this library's CPU usage is font loading each frame (caused by Rust's SDL2 library lifetime usage)
• Persistent State:
  • Persist widget state between view-generation cycles
    • User would no longer need to maintain that widget's state
  • Consider a map of widget id -> widget data
    • Enforces unique ids
  • Can use a trait to get data that needs to persist
    • How to get this data back from the map?
• Persistent State Alternative:
  • Do not generate new view, instead update view and re-layout
  • Implement a signal for view change to generate new view
  • Would then only lose state when new view is obtained
• Implement ECS for widgets and views (see widgets/widget.rs & views/view.rs)
  • What must each widget share?
  • What must each view share?
  • What do both share?
• Scaling for high resolution/dpi displays
• Better GFX:
  • Rounded rects
  • Circles
  • Cursors
• Basic Widgets:
  • Drop Menu
  • Radio Buttons
• Basic Views:
  • Menubar
  • Header/Footer
• Basic Components:
  • Dividers
  • Nested fixed-size views scrollable via scrollbars
• Basic Utilities:
  • File Browser
  • Message/Dialog Boxes
• Documentation:
  • Finish documenting and add examples
• Build Script:
  • Extract SDL2 libs for Windows
  • Generate docs (and provide option to open)
  • Run script
  • Make these optional via flags
• Add a GridView macro with respective methods (like tkinter)
• Implement font.rs (separate widgets, backend, and font).
• Stabilize FPS (without fixed loop dealys) -- implement delta time
• Implement graphics
  • Image rendering
    • Eventually, consider SVG rendering
  • Use images for buttons
    • How to handle varying width/height?
• Run callbacks on separate threads
• At some point, should be able to simply pass a canvas and render UI to existing canvas
  • This will require a different render cycle, as the user will define the run-loop
• Support multiple windows