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| # xi-win | ||
| # druid | ||
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| ## Xi editor for Windows | ||
| ## Data-oriented Rust User Interface Design toolkit | ||
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| This project is currently a seedling, which I am hopeful will grow | ||
| into a useful front-end for [xi editor](https://github.com/google/xi-editor). | ||
| Druid is a new Rust-native UI toolkit, still in early stages. Its main | ||
| goal is performance, also aiming for small binary size and compile time, | ||
| fast startup, and very easy build configuration (just `cargo run`). It | ||
| is currently Windows-only, but with hope for porting. | ||
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| It makes some decisions which are fairly unusual for GUI software | ||
| written in 2017. It targets winapi directly, rather than using a | ||
| toolkit, and is written in Rust. The main reason is so that we can | ||
| target performance; winapi has api's for Direct2D rendering that may | ||
| enable significantly lower latency and smoother scrolling than | ||
| accessible through a toolkit. Part of the reason for taking on this | ||
| project is to quantify the relative performance. | ||
| Raph gave a talk at the July 2018 SF Rust Meetup ([video][jul-2018-video], | ||
| [slides][jul-2018-slides]) about the design. Traditional object-oriented | ||
| designs have proved to be cumbersome. | ||
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| Other important dimensions of performance are startup speed and | ||
| executable size. | ||
| The layout protocol is inspired by Flutter. It is originally being developed | ||
| primarily for use by [xi-win], but has the potential to be useful for other | ||
| applications. Due to its focus on performance and the relative paucity of | ||
| toolkit-provided components, it is more likely to be useful for games and | ||
| music software than general-purpose GUI applications. It is currently used | ||
| as the basis for [Synthesizer IO]. | ||
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| Given the goals of this project and the (current) flux in the xi | ||
| protocol, I expect the focus of this project to be input and rendering | ||
| pipelines, with less emphasis on features; it may be a while before | ||
| this is really useful as an editor. That said, I certainly welcome | ||
| any help in getting there sooner. | ||
| ### The druid-win-shell layer | ||
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| The druid-win-shell layer is primarily an abstraction for displaying a window | ||
| and receiving events. As such, it is an alternative to [winit]. | ||
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| Ideally all Windows-specific logic (including all uses of `unsafe`) are isolated | ||
| to the druid-win-shell subcrate, and druid proper is cross platform and with | ||
| no unsafe code. That is not entirely the case now. | ||
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| ## Evolution | ||
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| This crate is currently in early stages. More features will be built out as | ||
| needed for use in the flagship apps, and this will inevitably lead to API | ||
| instability. Features hoped-for soon include: | ||
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| - [ ] More of the basic widgets | ||
| - [ ] Incremental presentation | ||
| - [ ] Some simple theming support | ||
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| The biggest single obstacle to porting is 2d graphics, as druid currently | ||
| uses Direct2D (and DirectWrite for text). One way forward is to create a | ||
| [2d graphics] abstraction. | ||
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| ## Alternatives | ||
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| In addition to wrappers for mature UI toolkits (mostly C++), [conrod] | ||
| and [azul] are interesting Rust-native efforts with promise to become usable. | ||
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| With a focus on 2D games, [ggez] also looks promising. | ||
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| ## Contributions | ||
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| We gladly accept contributions via GitHub pull requests. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for more details. | ||
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| If you are interested in contributing but not sure where to start, there is an active IRC channel at #xi on irc.mozilla.org. There is also a subreddit at /r/xi_editor. | ||
| A very good place to ask questions and discuss development work is our | ||
| [Zulip chat instance](https://xi.zulipchat.com), in the #druid channel. | ||
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| ## Authors | ||
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| The main author is Raph Levien. | ||
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| [xi-win]: https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-win | ||
| [winit]: https://github.com/tomaka/winit | ||
| [Synthesizer IO]: https://github.com/raphlinus/synthesizer-io | ||
| [jul-2018-video]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YTfxresvS8 | ||
| [jul-2018-slides]: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1aDTRl5R-icAF38Di-qJ4FzAl3pLlutTKVFcr3mUGgYo/edit?usp=sharing | ||
| [2d graphics]: https://raphlinus.github.io/rust/graphics/2018/10/11/2d-graphics.html | ||
| [conrod]: https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/conrod | ||
| [azul]: https://github.com/maps4print/azul | ||
| [ggez]: https://github.com/ggez/ggez |