Leadwerks GUI for Linux
It took most of the weekend, but I've got Leadwerks GUI running on Linux, rendering directly to an X11 window. This is the fastest possible rendering method on Linux, and I think you'll agree the results are worth it. You can try a demo here:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/14867-gui-demo/#entry100912
Just like the Windows implementation, I found it necessary to implement double-buffering. In X11 this is accomplished with the use of an extension called "xdbe". The documentation for usage of this feature is quite extensive and it's difficult to track down any working examples. Digging into reference material from 1995 really made me feel like an archaeologist, but ultimately I finally got it working and you can see the results. There's absolutely no flickering and because Leadwerks GUI is extremely good at rendering only the part of the screen that requires updating, it's super fast.
This library could be extremely helpful to developers making cross-platform desktop applications, especially for Linux. None of the existing GUI libraries are very good for writing modern applications. QT has a complicated build process that is difficult to integrate into existing software, and GTK has an asynchronous design that makes development very difficult. The system I am implementing provides fast performance, resolution-independent rendering, and best of all creating a new widget just involves modifying a simple Lua script.
- 9
6 Comments
Recommended Comments