An implementation of XAML cross-platform framework for C/C++.
This project is NOT complete, and still needs a lot of work. Welcome issues and pull requests!
The goal of XamlCpp is to write a cross-platfrom and cross-language* GUI application easily and quickly. It uses a dialect of XAML to discribe the UI, but may not support all features like other XAML frameworks do. The final application should be tiny, with a few dependencies.
* At first, I only want to target C++, and that's why it is called XamlCpp. Now it also targets C, with Rust and C#, in principle.
XamlCpp uses UTF-8 everywhere, which is ensured by a modified version of boost-nowide on Windows.
The object model of XamlCpp is inspired by COM. But there are some difference:
- COM uses
stdcallfor standard calling convention, while XamlCpp usescdeclon Windows. - In most cases, COM needs a server to manage the classes and memory, but XamlCpp needs not.
- COM distinguishes classes and interfaces. XamlCpp only provides interfaces, and the implementations could only be constructed by specified functions.
- COM uses
PascalName, while XamlCpp usessnake_name.
But there are many more similarities. For example, the definition of xaml_result is the same as HRESULT, and even the value means the same; both of them don't use exceptions; the object model looks like the same, and some GUIDs of primitive types is the same as .NET(which WAS COM+ at first).
Writing a class for XamlCpp is more complicated than a normal C++ class, but simpler than COM. You don't need idl files and non-standard keywords, but predefined helper macros. Such a definition of the interface could be easily projected to C, Rust and C#, which means different languages could cooperate (maybe not that?) easily.
XamlCpp supports reflection by this object model. All registered class could be constructed dynamically, and methods, properties and events registered could be accessed dynamically. Note that reflection is not free nor type-secure. Programmers are responsible for the cost and type checking, and any type mismatch is undefined behavior.
A simple example is here.
XamlCpp is a cross-platform GUI framework. With some simple, platform-specific work, you can make your application run on all platforms supported.
An example is here
GUI is divided into several parts. The basic UI project is responsible for the main loop, windows and system dialogs. It is necessary to run a GUI application.
| Platform | Light | Dark |
|---|---|---|
| Win32 |  |
 |
| GTK+3 |  |
 |
| QT5 |  |
 |
| Cocoa |  |
 |
* Due to API limitation, dark mode for Win32 is not completed.
** Screenshots of Gtk and Qt is captured on KDE with theme Breeze.
It supports desktop environment with concepts of "window" and "screen", and many dialogs like "message box" and "file box". It also supports high DPI settings even on Windows.
| Name | API set | Supported OS | Recommanded OS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Win32 | Windows API | Windows* | Windows |
| GTK+3 | GLib, Gdk, Gtk | Windows, Linux, MacOS | Windows/MinGW64, Linux |
| QT5 | Qt5Widgets | Windows, Linux, MacOS | Windows, Linux, MacOS |
| Cocoa | Cocoa | MacOS | MacOS |
* At least Windows 7.
Common controls, works on all platforms.
A canvas control.
| Name | API set |
|---|---|
| Win32 | Direct2D |
| GTK+3 | Cairo |
| QT5 | QPainter |
| Cocoa | NSGraphicsContext |
A webview control.
| Name | API set |
|---|---|
| Win32 | Edge(Chromium) -> Edge -> IE * |
| GTK+3 | Webkit ** |
| QT5 | Qt5WebEngine or Qt5WebKit *** |
| Cocoa | WebKit |
* Indicates the search order. IE is supported to ensure it could be used.
** Linux only because of the limitation of webkit2gtk.
*** Could be specified in configuration.
XamlCpp uses a dialect of XAML, which may support XAML Standard in the future. XAML files are either interpreted at run-time, or compiled to C++ code at compile-time.
Here's an XAML example:
<window xmlns="https://github.com/Berrysoft/XamlCpp/"
xmlns:x="https://github.com/Berrysoft/XamlCpp/xaml/"
title="Test Window" location="200, 100" size="800, 600">
<grid margin="10" columns="1*, 0.8*, 1*" rows="1*, auto, 1*">
<label x:name="mylabel" grid.column="0" grid.row="1" margin="5, 0" text_halignment="right" valignment="center" text="{binding text,element=mybutton,mode=one_way}"/>
<button x:name="mybutton" grid.column="1" grid.row="1" click="on_button_click">Hello</button>
<canvas grid.column="0" grid.row="2" margin="10" redraw="on_canvas_redraw"/>
</grid>
</window>The xmlns should be https://github.com/Berrysoft/XamlCpp/ to use default controls. The xml attributes decribes the properties, events and attach properties of a control.
The XAML parser uses a modified version of rapidxml_ns. It is modified to use features of C++ 17 and simplified to support UTF-8 only for convenience.
XamlCpp provides a detector called xmald to show the reflection information of a dynamic library for XamlCpp.
XamlCpp provides a resource compiler called xamlrc, to embed small files into the final program. It supports UTF-8 only.
A C++17-compliant compiler is required. Actually it needs C++ 20, but no compiler is compliant...
This project assumes it is built by MSVC 19.27+, GCC 10.0+ or Clang 10.0+.
boost is required on all platforms for cmdline.
wil is required. Other packages will be downloaded from NuGet when configuring.
gtk is required.
gtk and pkgconfig are required. webkit2gtk is also required on Linux for webview.
qt5-base is required. Either qt5-webengine or qt5-webkit is also required for webview.
No other package is needed.