impress. Go GUI cross-platform library

See the project site for technical details and a library overview.

Some usage examples are in the examples folder.

Hello World Example

Let's say hello:

package main

import (
    "image"
    "image/color"

    "github.com/codeation/impress"
    "github.com/codeation/impress/event"

    _ "github.com/codeation/impress/duo"
)

func main() {
    app := impress.NewApplication(image.Rect(0, 0, 480, 240), "Hello World Application")
    defer app.Close()

    font := app.NewFont(15, map[string]string{"family": "Verdana"})
    defer font.Close()

    w := app.NewWindow(image.Rect(0, 0, 480, 240), color.RGBA{255, 255, 255, 255})
    defer w.Drop()

    w.Text("Hello, world!", font, image.Pt(200, 100), color.RGBA{0, 0, 0, 255})
    w.Line(image.Pt(200, 120), image.Pt(300, 120), color.RGBA{255, 0, 0, 255})
    w.Show()
    app.Sync()

    for {
        e := <-app.Chan()
        if e == event.DestroyEvent || e == event.KeyExit {
            break
        }
    }
}

See an explanation of the source code in a library overview.

To run this example on Debian/Ubuntu:

0. Install gcc, make, pkg-config if you don't have them installed.

1. Install GTK 4 libraries if you don't have them installed:

sudo apt-get install libgtk-4-dev

2. Build impress terminal from source:

git clone https://github.com/codeation/it.git
cd it/four
make
cd ../..

3. Then run the example:

git clone https://github.com/codeation/impress.git
cd impress
IMPRESS_TERMINAL_PATH=../it/four/it go run ./examples/simple/

Steps 0-2 are needed to build an impress terminal binary. See the impress terminal page for other options for downloading or building the impress terminal.

The environment variable IMPRESS_TERMINAL_PATH specifies the path to the built impress terminal.

Technical details

Basic Principles of Library Design:

• Performance of the application as well as native applications.
• Simple and clean application code.
• Creating a GUI application without a form designer or hard-coded widgets.

The main idea is to stay away from the event-driven programming paradigm. See the "What's wrong with event-driven programming" page for more details.

The library uses a separate application (GTK terminal) for drawing instead of binding a low-level library to Golang.

Project State

• The project is currently in its beta stage. It is highly suitable for the development of in-house applications.
• The project was tested on Debian 12.10 and macOS 15.4.1.
• While the API remains stable, please note that the specific details may be subject to change.

The project roadmap includes both short-term and long-term project stages.

A cross-platform mind-map application is being developed to showcase the core principles of the library.

Contributing

First, welcome:

• Any clue to keep the project going (star, post, link, etc.).
• Any recommendations about library design principles.
• Contributions to the project, documentation, examples.
• Bug report, open an issue.
• Or any help to fix grammatical or writing errors (PR or issue).