IUP for Zig

WIP Work in Progress

A Zig language idiomatic and type-checked bindings for IUP Portable User Interface Toolkit

Examples

• Simple notepad (in progress)
• 7GUIs
• Button
• Image
• List
• Tree
• MDI
• Gauge
• Tabs

First look

A simple hello world example looks like this:

usingnamespace @import("iup.zig");

pub fn main() !void {
    try MainLoop.open();
    defer MainLoop.close();

    var main_dialog = try (Dialog.init()
        .setTitle("Hello World")
        .setChildren(
        .{
            VBox.init()
                .setMargin(10, 10)
                .setGap(10)
                .setAlignment(.ACenter)
                .setChildren(
                .{
                    Label.init()
                        .setTitle("Hello World from IUPforZig"),
                    Button.init()
                        .setTitle("OK")
                        .setActionCallback(exit),
                },
            ),
        },
    ).unwrap());
    defer main_dialog.deinit();

    try main_dialog.showXY(.Center, .Center);
    try MainLoop.beginLoop();
}

fn exit(button: *Button) !void {
    MainLoop.exitLoop();
}

Resulting in this:

IUP Metadata

This project contains source-code automatically generated by The IUP Metadata Project.

Most of the hard/repetitive work was done by code-gen tool, however, the API guidelines and all the interop code belongs here on this project.

API

Zig does not require any special treatment to use C libraries, so to use IUP in Zig, it is as simple as adding @cInclude("iup.h") in your source code, no need for special bindings!

This project attempts to create Zig bindings for IUP Toolkit with idiomatic and type-checked API, where none of the original IUP's declarations are exposed in the public interface, only names and concepts are kept as close as possible.

Comparison:

1. IUP simple example in C:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <iup.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  Ihandle *dlg, *multitext, *vbox;

  IupOpen(&argc, &argv);

  multitext = IupText(NULL);
  vbox = IupVbox(
    multitext,
    NULL);
  IupSetAttribute(multitext, "MULTILINE", "YES");
  IupSetAttribute(multitext, "EXPAND", "YES");

  dlg = IupDialog(vbox);
  IupSetAttribute(dlg, "TITLE", "Simple Notepad");
  IupSetAttribute(dlg, "SIZE", "QUARTERxQUARTER");

  IupShowXY(dlg, IUP_CENTER, IUP_CENTER);
  IupSetAttribute(dlg, "USERSIZE", NULL);

  IupMainLoop();

  IupClose();
  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

2. Equivalent example in Zig:

usingnamespace @import("iup.zig");

pub fn main() !void {
    try MainLoop.open();
    defer MainLoop.close();

    var main_dialog = try (Dialog.init()
        .setTitle("Simple Notepad")
        .setSize(.Quarter, .Quarter)
        .setChildren(
        .{
            VBox.init()
                .setChildren(
                .{
                    Text.init()
                        .setMultiline(true)
                        .setExpand(.Yes),
                },
            ),
        },
    ).unwrap());
    defer main_dialog.deinit();

    try main_dialog.showXY(.Center, .Center);
    try MainLoop.beginLoop();
}

How to build

The build.zig file is the bare minimum for link against IUP shared libraries on Linux and Windows.

Please visit IUP's download page for your platform: https://sourceforge.net/projects/iup/files/3.30/

Dependencies for libim and libcd are also required:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/imtoolkit/files/3.15/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/canvasdraw/files/5.14/

Pending work

• Support for collections and indexed attributes (list items for example)

• Complete the Simple Notepad example.

• Support Linux and Windows (using shared libs)

• Investigate how to build IUP from C sources in Zig.

• More tests, and sanitize failing tests.

• Additional controls (image library, matrix, GLCanvas, scintilla, plot, etc)

Feel free to place any comments/issues/PRs, it will be very nice to receive any feedback 🚀.

Prior Art

Some great projects that served as inspiration.

• Common Lisp CFFI bindings

• Iup4D is a D binding library

• IUP Rust

License

• This project is a free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. Plese visit unlicense.org for more details.

• IUP is a Tecgraf/PUC-Rio project licensed under the terms of the MIT license. Please visit https://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/ for more details.