It has come to my attention that I have not been particularly clear about how usable or feature-complete libui is, and that this has fooled many people into expecting more from libui right this moment than I have explicitly promised to make available. I apologize for not doing this sooner.

libui is currently mid-alpha software. Much of what is currently present runs stabily enough for the examples and perhaps some small programs to work, but the stability is still a work-in-progress, much of what is already there is not feature-complete, some of it will be buggy on certain platforms, and there's a lot of stuff missing. In short, here's a list of features that I would like to add to libui, but that aren't in yet:

• trees
• clipboard support, including drag and drop
• more and better dialogs
• printing
• accessibility for uiArea and custom controls
• document-based programs
• tighter OS integration (especially for document-based programs), to allow programs to fully feel native, rather than merely look and act native
• better support for standard dialogs and features (search bars, etc.)
• OpenGL support

In addition, here is a list of issues generalizing existing problems.

Furthermore, libui is not properly fully documented yet. This is mainly due to the fact that the API was initially unstable enough so as to result in rewriting documentation multiple times, in addition to me not being happy with really any existing C code documentation tool. That being said, I have started to pin down my ideal code documentation style in parts of ui.h, most notably in the uiAttributedString APIs. Over time, I plan on extending this to the rest of the headers. You can also use the documentation for libui's Go bindings as a reference, though it is somewhat stale and not optimally written.

But libui is not dead; I am working on it whenever I can, and I hope to get it to a point of real quality soon!

Note that today's entry (Eastern Time) may be updated later today.

• 7 April 2019

  • The build system has been switched to Meson. See below for instructions. This change was made because the previous build system, CMake, caused countless headaches over trivial issues. Meson was chosen due to how unproblematic setting up libui's build just right was, as well as having design goals that are by coincidence closely aligned with what libui wants.
  • Travis CI has been replaced with Azure Pipelines and much of the AppVeyor CI configuration was integrated into the Azure Pipelines configuration. This shouldn't affect most developers.

• 1 September 2018

  • Alpha 4.1 is here. This is an emergency fix to Alpha 4 to fix uiImageAppend() not working as documented. It now works properly, with one important difference you'll need to care about: it now requires image data to be alpha-premultiplied. In addition, uiImage also is implemented slightly more nicely now, and ui.h has minor documentation typo fixes.
  • Alpha 4.1 also tries to make everything properly PIC-enabled.

• 10 August 2018

  • Alpha 4 is finally here. Everything from Alpha 3.5 and what's listed below is in this release; the two biggest changes are still the new text drawing API and new uiTable control. In between all that is a whole bunch of bugfixes, and hopefully more stability too. Thanks to everybody who helped contribute!
  • Alpha 4 should hopefully also include automated binary releases via CI. Thanks to those who helped set that up!

• 8 August 2018

  • Finally introduced an API for loading images, uiImage, and a new control, uiTable, for displaying tabular data. These provide enough basic functionality for now, but will be improved over time. You can read the documentation for the new features as they are here. Thanks to everyone who helped get to this point, in particular @bcampbell for the initial Windows code, and to everyone else for their patience!

• 30 May 2018

  • Merged the previous Announcements and Updates section of this README into a single News section, and merged the respective archive files into a single NEWS.md file.

• 16 May 2018

  • Thanks to @parro-it and @msink, libui now has better CI, including AppVeyor for Windows CI, and automated creation of binary releases when I make a tagged release.

• 13 May 2018

  • Added new functions to work with uiDateTimePickers: uiDateTimePickerTime(), uiDateTimePickerSetTime(), and uiDateTimePickerOnChanged(). These operate on standard <time.h> struct tms. Thanks @cody271!
  • Release builds on Windows with MSVC should be fixed now; thanks @l0calh05t, @slahn, @mischnic, and @zentner-kyle.

• 12 May 2018

  • GTK+ and OS X now have a cleaner build process for static libraries which no longer has intermediate files and differing configurations. As a result, certain issues should no longer be present. New naming rules for internal symbols of libui have also started being drafted; runtime symbols and edge cases still need to be handled (and the rules applied to Windows) before this can become a regular thing.

• 2 May 2018

  • On Windows, you no longer need to carry around a libui.res file with static builds. You do need to link in the appropriate manifest file, such as the one in the windows/ folder (I still need to figure out exactly what is needed apart from the Common Controls v6 dependency, or at least to create a complete-ish template), or at least include it alongside your executables. This also means you should no longer see random cmake errors when building the static libraries.

• 18 April 2018

  • Introduced a new uiTimer() function for running code on a timer on the main thread. (Thanks to @cody271.)
  • Migrated all code in the common/ directory to use uipriv prefixes for everything that isn't static. This is the first step toward fixing static library oddities within libui, allowing libui to truly be safely used as either a static library or a shared library.

• 18 March 2018

  • Introduced an all-new formatted text API that allows you to process formatted text in ways that the old API wouldn't allow. You can read on the whole API here. There is also a new examples for it: drawtext, which shows the whole API at a glance. It doesn't yet support measuring or manipulating text, nor does it currently support functions that would be necessary for things like text editors; all of this will be added back later.
  • libui also now uses my utf library for UTF-8 and UTF-16 processing, to allow consistent behavior across platforms. This usage is not completely propagated throughout libui, but the Windows port uses it in most places now, and eventually this will become what libui will use throughout.
  • Also introduced a formal set of contribution guidelines, see CONTRIBUTING.md for details. They are still WIP.

• 17 February 2018

  • The longstanding Enter+Escape crashes on Windows have finally been fixed (thanks to @lxn).
  • Alpha 3.5 is now here. This is a quickie release primiarly intended to deploy the above fix to package ui itself. It is a partial binary release; sorry! More new things will come in the next release, which will also introduce semver (so it will be called v0.4.0 instead).
  • Alpha 3.5 also includes a new control gallery example. The screenshots below have not been updated yet.

• 27 November 2016

  • Decided to split the table stuff into its own branch. It will be developed independently of everything else, along with a few other features.

• 2 November 2016

  • Added two new functions to replace the deleted uiWindowPosition() and friends: uiAreaBeginUserWindowMove() and uiAreaBeginUserWindowResize(). When used in a uiAreaHandler.Mouse() event handler, these let you initiate a user-driven mouse move or mouse resize of the window at any point in a uiArea.

• 31 October 2016

  • @krakjoe noticed that I accidentally used thread-unsafe code in uiQueueMain() on Unix. Fixed.

• 24 October 2016

  • uiWindowSetContentSize() on Unix no longer needs to call up the GTK+ main loop. As a result, bugs related to strange behavior using that function (and the now-deleted uiWindowSetPosition() and uiWindowCenter()) should go away. I'll need to go through the bugs to verify as much, though.

• 22 October 2016

  • Due to being unable to guarantee they will work (especially as we move toward capability-driven window systems like Wayland), or being unable to work without hacking that breaks other things, the following functions have been removed: uiWindowPosition(), uiWindowSetPosition(), uiWindowCenter(), and uiWindowOnPositionChanged(). Centering may come back at some point in the future, albeit in a possibly restricted form. A function to initiate a user move when a part of a uiArea is clicked will be provided soon.

• 21 October 2016

  • uiDrawTextWeightUltraBold is now spelled correctly. Thanks to @krakjoe.

• 18 June 2016

  • Help decide the design of tables and trees in libui; the implementation starts within the next few days, if not tomorrow!

• 17 June 2016

  • CMake 3.1.0 is now required. This is due to CMake's rapid development pace in the past few years adding things libui needs to build on as many systems as possible. If your OS is supported by libui but its repositories ship with an older version of CMake, you will need to find an updated one somewhere.
  • Please help plan out a better menu API.
  • uiMainSteps() no longer takes any arguments and no longer needs to invoke a function to do the work. You still need to call it, but once you do, it will return immediately and you can then get right to your main loop.
  • CMake 3.1.0 is now required. This is due to CMake's rapid development pace in the past few years adding things libui needs to build on as many systems as possible. If your OS is supported by libui but its repositories ship with an older version of CMake, you will need to find an updated one somewhere.
  • Added uiNewVerticalSeparator() to complement uiNewHorizontalSeparator().

• 16 June 2016

  • Added uiWindowContentSize(), uiWindowSetContentSize(), and uiWindowOnContentSizeChanged() methods for manipulating uiWindow content sizes. Note the use of "content size"; the size you work with does NOT include window decorations (titlebars, menus, etc.).
  • Added uiWindowFullscreen() and uiWindowSetFullscreen() to allow making fullscreen uiWindows, taking advantage of OS facilities for fullscreen and without changing the screen resolution (!).
  • Added uiWindowBorderless() and uiWindowSetBorderless() for allowing borderless uiWindows.
  • Added uiMainSteps(). You call this instead of uiMain() if you want to run the main loop yourself. You pass in a function that will be called; within that function, you call uiMainStep() repeatedly until it returns 0, doing whatever you need to do in the meantime. (This was needed because just having uiMainStep() by itself only worked on some systems.)
  • Added uiProgressBarValue() and allowed passing -1 to uiProgressBarSetValue() to make an indeterminate progress bar. Thanks to @emersion.

• 15 June 2016

  • Added uiFormDelete(); thanks to @emersion.
  • Added uiWindowPosition(), uiWindowSetPosition(), uiWindowCenter(), and uiWindowOnPositionChanged(), methods for manipulating uiWindow position.

• 14 June 2016

  • uiDarwinControl now has a ChildVisibilityChanged() method and a corresponding NotifyVisibilityChanged() function that is called by the default show/hide handlers. This is used to make visibility changes work on OS X; uiBox, uiForm, and uiGrid all respect these now.
  • The same has been done on the Windows side as well.
  • Hiding and showing controls and padding calculations are now correct on Windows at long last.
  • Hiding a control in a uiForm now hides its label on all platforms.

• 13 June 2016

  • intmax_t and uintmax_t are no longer used for libui API functions; now we use int. This should make things much easier for bindings. int should be at least 32 bits wide; this should be sufficient for all but the most extreme cases.

• 12 June 2016

  • Added uiGrid, a new container control that arranges controls in rows and columns, with stretchy ("expanding") rows, stretchy ("expanding") columns, cells that span rows and columns, and cells whose content is aligned in either direction rather than just filling. It's quite powerful, is it? =P

• 8 June 2016

  • Added uiForm, a new container control that arranges controls vertically, with properly aligned labels on each. Have fun!

• 6 June 2016

  • Added uiRadioButtonsSelected(), uiRadioButtonsSetSelected(), and uiRadioButtonsOnSelected() to control selection of a radio button and catch an event when such a thing happens.

• 5 June 2016

  • Alpha 3.1 is here. This was a much-needed update to Alpha 3 that changes a few things:
    • The build system is now cmake. cmake 2.8.11 or higher is needed.
    • Static linking is now fully possible.
    • MinGW linking is back, but static only.
  • Added uiNewPasswordEntry(), which creates a new uiEntry suitable for entering passwords.
  • Added uiNewSearchEntry(), which creates a new uiEntry suitable for searching. On some systems, the OnChanged() event will be slightly delayed and/or combined, to produce a more natural feel when searching.

• 29 May 2016

  • Alpha 3 is here! Get it here.
  • The next packaged release will introduce:
    • uiGrid, another way to lay out controls, a la GtkGrid
    • uiOpenGLArea, a way to render OpenGL content in a libui uiArea
    • uiTable, a data grid control that may or may not have tree facilities (if it does, it will be called uiTree instead)
    • a complete, possibly rewritten, drawing and text rendering infrastructure
  • Thanks to @pcwalton, we can now statically link libui! Simply do make STATIC=1 instead of just make.
    • On Windows you must link both libui.lib and libui.res AND provide a Common Controls 6 manifest for output static binaries to work properly.

• 28 May 2016

  • As promised, the minimum system requirements are now OS X 10.8 and GTK+ 3.10 for OS X and Unix, respectively.

• 26 May 2016

  • Two OS X-specific functions have been added: uiDarwinMarginAmount() and uiDarwinPaddingAmount(). These return the amount of margins and padding, respectively, to give to a control, and are intended for container implementations. These are suitable for the constant of a NSLayoutConstraint. They both take a pointer parameter that is reserved for future use and should be NULL.

• 25 May 2016

  • uiDrawTextLayout attributes are now specified in units of graphemes on all platforms. This means characters as seen from a user's perspective, not Unicode codepoints or UTF-8 bytes. So a long string of combining marker codepoints after one codepoint would still count as one grapheme.

• 24 May 2016

  • You can now help choose a potential new build system for libui.
  • Tomorrow I will decide if OS X 10.7 will also be dropped alongside GTK+ 3.4-3.8 this Saturday. Stay tuned.
  • As promised, uiCombobox is now split into uiCombobox for non-editable comboboxes and uiEditableCombobox for editable comboboxes. Mind the function changes as well :)
  • There is a new function uiMainStep(), which runs one iteration of the main loop. It takes a single boolean argument, indicating whether to wait for an event to occur or not. It returns true if an event was processed (or if no event is available if you don't want to wait) and false if the event loop was told to stop (for instance, uiQuit() was called).

• 23 May 2016

  • Fixed surrogate pair drawing on OS X.

• 22 May 2016

  • Two more open questions I'd like your feedback on are available here and here.
  • Sometime in the next 48 hours (before 23:59 EDT on 24 May 2016) I will split uiCombobox into two separate controls, uiCombobox and uiEditableCombobox, each with slightly different events and "selected item" mechanics. Prepare your existing code.
  • Removed uiControlVerifyDestroy(); that is now part of uiFreeControl() itself.
  • Added uiPi, a constant for π. This is provided for C and C++ programmers, where there is no standard named constant for π; bindings authors shouldn't need to worry about this.
  • Fixed uiMultilineEntry not properly having line breaks on Windows.
  • Added uiNewNonWrappingMultilineEntry(), which creates a uiMultilineEntry that scrolls horizontally instead of wrapping lines. (This is not documented as being changeable after the fact on Windows, hence it's a creation-time choice.)
  • uiAreas on Windows and some internal Direct2D areas now respond to WM_PRINTCLIENT properly, which should hopefully increase the quality of screenshots.
  • uiDateTimePicker on GTK+ works properly on RTL layouts and no longer disappears off the bottom of the screen if not enough room is available. It will also no longer be marked for localization of the time format (what the separator should be and whether to use 24-hour time), as that information is not provided by the locale system. :(
  • Added uiUserBugCannotSetParentOnToplevel(), which should be used by implementations of toplevel controls in their SetParent() implementations. This will also be the beginning of consolidating common user bug messages into a single place, though this will be one of the only few exported user bug functions.
  • uiSpinbox and uiSlider now merely swap their min and max if min ≥ max. They will no longer panic and do nothing, respectively.
  • Matrix scaling will no longer leave the matrix in an invalid state on OS X and GTK+.
  • uiMultilineEntrySetText() and uiMutlilineEntryAppend() on GTK+ no longer fire OnChanged() events.

• 21 May 2016

  • I will now post announcements and updates here.
  • Now that Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is here, no earlier than next Saturday, 28 May 2016 at noon EDT, I will bump the minimum GTK+ version from 3.4 to 3.10. This will add a lot of new features that I can now add to libui, such as search-oriented uiEntries, lists of arbitrary control layouts, and more. If you are still running a Linux distribution that doesn't come with 3.10, you will either need to upgrade or use jhbuild to set up a newer version of GTK+ in a private environment.
  • You can decide if I should also drop OS X 10.7 here.