A super simple tkinter-like widget based GUI toolkit to create simple C++ graphical apps.
It uses SDL2 has a backend for creating windows, rendering shapes and colours and fetching input. This information is handled and filtered through two main parent classes, Parents and Widgets.
Parents
- Base class for storing and organising widgets in a grid, handles event hand outs
Widget
- Base class for everything that gets displayed, contains all event methods.
A valid font.ttf file should be in the same directory as the binary. This font should be fixed width. This font must be able to display any characters that you wish to display as there are no fallbacks.
Additionally, all widgets should be created using the new keyword (Widget *w = new Widget()). This is to allow for cleaning up to take place once the window's run() has returned.
Creating a basic app looks something like this
Window root = Window();
Entry* entry = new Entry(&root);
entry->grid(0, 0);
Button* button = new Button(&root, "Click me", [](){
std::cout << "I was clicked" << std::endl;
});
button->grid(0, 1);
root.run();A Parent is created and Widgets are added onto that parent. If the parent is a Window, the window's run() method is called. Configuring a widget should ideally take place before adding it to the Parent, however there are some configurations (any that don't affect the look of the widget) which do not matter (binding events, setting tooltips etc) and can be done at any time.
Closing the root window (the first window created / the window with internal_window_id of 0) will close all other windows and call SDL_Quit(). Because of this, the root window should be created first and its run() method called last. Everything in all windows runs on one thread.
Window root = Window();
// add everything to the root window
Label *label_1 = new Label(&root, "Root label");
label_1->grid();
// Create second window
Window second = Window();
Label *label_2 = new Label(&second, "Second label");
label_2->grid();
second.run();
root.run();Events defined in the WidgetEvents enum class can have callbacks (std::function<void()>) pushed into a vector which will all be called when that event takes place. This method can be called at any time. For widgets with built-in event handling (i.e Buttons having their own callback for on_release), further callbacks can be added through this method.
To build, the following are required
- SDL2 (
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev) - SDL2_ttf (
sudo apt install libsdl2-ttf-dev)
Organisation can be created using dynamic grids or placing with exact co-ordinated
Frames act as sub-grids allowing for further organisation.
Widgets will be as close as possible without crossing a row or column.
Having two widgets like this:
+-----++-----+
| 0,0 || 0,1 |
+-----++-----+
And inserting into 1,0 will cause 0,1 to move
+-----+ +-----+
| 0,0 | | 0,1 |
+-----+ +-----+
+---------+
| 1,0 |
+---------+
To prevent 0,1 from being moved it, along with 0,0, can be placed in a frame. This frame would be gridden in 0,0 of the main parent.
Just create makefiles using cmake, then build it. Example:
cmake CMakeLists.txt
make
