DisplayServiceLibraries.md

Display Service Libraries and Platforms

What do we want to use for a display service?

Display Service Notes and Research

• For underlying libraries: Layout and Vector APIs
• We probably need a Display Server eventually - some notes on why and what that would mean

Local GUI Libraries

There are a number of cross-platform libraries in existence. Some have Ruby bindings.

• LibUI is alpha-level, but we've made multiple attempts at it
• GTK+ has decent-looking Ruby bindings, but not user-friendly; Glimmer has a DSL for them; looks decent?
• Qt has bindings, but no longer maintained
• FOX/fxwindows has a Ruby binding, but it's fairly out of date
• wxWindows has a Ruby binding, but it's long out of date; there's a fork, also long out of date; and a more recent binding, but no MacOS support (yet)

See also other Shoes implementations, which could provide an excellent jumping-off point for starting with some of these. It's also worth checking for a Glimmer DSL for anything here. It's not usually a drop-in perfect fit for what we're doing, but it can show us a lot of the hard parts and how Glimmer got around them.