Nuklear

A small, simple and portable immediate mode UI library

Documentation | Getting Started | Gallery & Examples

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Description

This is a minimal-state, immediate-mode graphical user interface toolkit written in ANSI C and licensed under public domain. It was designed as a simple embeddable user interface for application and does not have any dependencies, a default render backend or OS window/input handling but instead provides a highly modular, library-based approach, with simple input state for input and draw commands describing primitive shapes as output. So instead of providing a layered library that tries to abstract over a number of platform and render backends, it focuses only on the actual UI.

Quick links:

Documentation & Wiki	Getting Started	Building Nuklear
Contributing	FAQ, Support, Issues	License & credits
Gallery & Examples	Bindings	Reviewers guide

Features

• Immediate-mode graphical user interface toolkit
• Single-header library
• Written in C89 (ANSI C)
• Small codebase (~18kLOC)
• Focus on portability, efficiency and simplicity
• No dependencies (not even the standard library if not wanted)
• Fully skinnable and customizable
• Low memory footprint with total control of memory usage if needed / wanted
• UTF-8 support
• No global or hidden state
• Customizable library modules (you can compile and use only what you need)
• Optional font baker and vertex buffer output
• Documentation

Quick start 🚀

1. Download the header and place it in your project
2. Include nuklear.h and define NK_IMPLEMENTATION

#define NK_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "nuklear.h"

3. Take a look at one of the backend examples to see how you can plug Nuklear in your backend of choice (Or just copy paste the files for your preferred backend into your project to get up and running fast) . See Getting Started for in depth steps and examples on setting up Nuklear with a rendering backing.
4. You're ready to create a UI with Nuklear. Check the wiki for examples and documentation on components, layouts and more.

This library is self-contained in one single header file and can be used either in header-only mode or in implementation mode. The header-only mode is used by default when included and allows including this header in other headers and does not contain the actual implementation.

The implementation mode requires defining the preprocessor macro NK_IMPLEMENTATION in one .c/.cpp file before #includeing this file, e.g.:

IMPORTANT: Every time you include "nuklear.h" you have to define the same optional flags. This is very important; not doing it either leads to compiler errors, or even worse, stack corruptions.

See Getting Started for more examples and detailed explanations.

Example

/* init gui state */
struct nk_context ctx;
nk_init_fixed(&ctx, calloc(1, MAX_MEMORY), MAX_MEMORY, &font);

enum {EASY, HARD};
static int op = EASY;
static float value = 0.6f;
static int i =  20;

if (nk_begin(&ctx, "Show", nk_rect(50, 50, 220, 220),
    NK_WINDOW_BORDER|NK_WINDOW_MOVABLE|NK_WINDOW_CLOSABLE)) {
    /* fixed widget pixel width */
    nk_layout_row_static(&ctx, 30, 80, 1);
    if (nk_button_label(&ctx, "button")) {
        /* event handling */
    }

    /* fixed widget window ratio width */
    nk_layout_row_dynamic(&ctx, 30, 2);
    if (nk_option_label(&ctx, "easy", op == EASY)) op = EASY;
    if (nk_option_label(&ctx, "hard", op == HARD)) op = HARD;

    /* custom widget pixel width */
    nk_layout_row_begin(&ctx, NK_STATIC, 30, 2);
    {
        nk_layout_row_push(&ctx, 50);
        nk_label(&ctx, "Volume:", NK_TEXT_LEFT);
        nk_layout_row_push(&ctx, 110);
        nk_slider_float(&ctx, 0, &value, 1.0f, 0.1f);
    }
    nk_layout_row_end(&ctx);
}
nk_end(&ctx);

Gallery

Bindings

There are a number of nuklear bindings for different languages created by other authors. I cannot attest for their quality since I am not necessarily proficient in any of these languages. Furthermore there are no guarantee that all bindings will always be kept up to date:

• Java by Guillaume Legris
• D by Mateusz Muszyński
• Golang by golang-ui@github.com
• Rust by snuk182@github.com
• Chicken by wasamasa@github.com
• Nim by zacharycarter@github.com
• Lua
  • LÖVE-Nuklear by Kevin Harrison
  • MoonNuklear by Stefano Trettel
• Python
  • pyNuklear by William Emerison Six (ctypes-based wrapper)
  • pynk by nathanrw@github.com (cffi binding)
• CSharp/.NET by cartman300@github.com
• V by Nicolas Sauzede

Contributing

Thanks for your interest in contributing to Nuklear! Contributions are always welcome and we appreciate the work. A few pointers:

• Ask around on Discord or check the Issues page to verify if your idea is something that the community also wants before putting in precious hours of work. If its something small, just open a PR and we'll look at it 👍
• Please take note of the reviewers guide below to see what's important when submitting your PR.
• Check the Issues page if you want to find something to work on

Reviewers guide

When reviewing pull request there are common things a reviewer should keep in mind.

Reviewing changes to src/* and nuklear.h:

• Ensure C89 compatibility.
• The code should work for several backends to an acceptable degree.
• Check no other parts of nuklear.h are related to the PR and thus nothing is missing.
• Recommend simple optimizations.
  • Pass small structs by value instead of by pointer.
  • Use local buffers over heap allocation when possible.
• Check that the coding style is consistent with code around it.
  • Variable/function name casing.
  • Indentation.
  • Curly bracket ({}) placement.
• Ensure that the contributor has bumped the appropriate version in clib.json and added their changes to the CHANGELOG.
• Have at least one other person review the changes before merging.
• Check that no unneeded files or changes are added (Like editor ignores in the .gitignore, or temp files).

Reviewing changes to demo/*, example/* and other files in the repo:

• Focus on getting working code merged.
  • We want to make it easy for people to get started with Nuklear, and any demo and example improvements helps in this regard.
• Use of newer C features, or even other languages is not discouraged.
  • If another language is used, ensure that the build process is easy to figure out.
• Messy or less efficient code can be merged so long as these outliers are pointed out and easy to find.
• Version shouldn't be bumped for these changes.
• Changes that improves code to be more inline with nuklear.h are ofc always welcome.

Credits

Developed by Micha Mettke and every direct or indirect contributor to the GitHub.

Embeds stb_texedit, stb_truetype and stb_rectpack by Sean Barrett (public domain) Embeds ProggyClean.ttf font by Tristan Grimmer (MIT license).

Big thank you to Omar Cornut (ocornut@github) for his imgui library and giving me the inspiration for this library, Casey Muratori for handmade hero and his original immediate-mode graphical user interface idea and Sean Barrett for his amazing single-header libraries which restored my faith in libraries and brought me to create some of my own. Finally Apoorva Joshi for his single-header file packer.

License

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This software is available under 2 licenses -- choose whichever you prefer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALTERNATIVE A - MIT License
Copyright (c) 2017 Micha Mettke
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALTERNATIVE B - Public Domain (www.unlicense.org)
This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.
Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this
software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose,
commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.
In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of this
software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the public
domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to
the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an
overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to
this software under copyright law.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
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