Make it render

A Zig library for cross-platform window handling and CPU-based rendering, without any dependencies.

It is an experimental project with constant changes.

What this is

• Abstraction between X11, Windows and macOS (soon?)
• Window management, keyboard and mouse input events
• Text rendering with Unicode support (embedded Terminus and Unifont fonts)
• Image loading (PBM format) and scaling
• A Canvas to put pixels on
• Pure Zig — only uses C when linking to Win32 required libraries
• Produces small and performant statically-linked binaries
• No dependencies, all in one

What this is not

• It is not a GUI library or game engine
• It does not use GPU (no OpenGL nor Vulkan)
• It does not support mobile (no Android nor iOS)

Structure

Each module is independent and usable by itself. The glue module ties them together.

• anywindow — Window handling abstraction
  • x11: native X11 protocol implementation (no Xlib)
  • windows: Win32 API
  • macos: (planned)
• text — Font loading, glyph rendering, Unicode support
  • fonts: embedded Unifont and Terminus (multiple sizes)
  • bdf: BDF font format parser (with gzip support)
• image — Image loading
  • pbm: PBM format (P1 ASCII and P4 binary)
• glue.zig — Joins everything
  • canvas: infinite drawing canvas with z-order
  • image: nearest-neighbor scaling

Work in progress

Notably missing:

• Wayland support
• macOS support

Usage

Building

zig build        # build the library and demo
zig build run    # run the demo
zig build test   # run tests
zig build docs   # generate documentation

As a dependency

zig fetch --save git+https://github.com/diogok/make-it-render

Then in your build.zig, import the module:

const make_it_render = b.dependency("make_it_render", .{ .target = target, .optimize = optimize });
exe_mod.addImport("make_it_render", make_it_render.module("make_it_render"));

Example

const std = @import("std");
const make_it_render = @import("make_it_render");

pub fn main() !void {
    var gpa = std.heap.GeneralPurposeAllocator(.{}){};
    defer std.debug.assert(gpa.deinit() != .leak);
    const allocator = gpa.allocator();

    var wm = try make_it_render.anywindow.WindowManager.init(allocator);
    defer wm.deinit();

    var window = try wm.createWindow(.{ .title = "hello, world." });
    defer window.deinit();

    var canvas = make_it_render.glue.Canvas.init(allocator, &window);
    defer canvas.deinit();

    try window.show();

    while (window.status == .open) {
        const event = try wm.receive();
        switch (event) {
            .close => window.close(),
            .draw => try canvas.draw(),
            else => {},
        }
    }
}

See src/demo.zig for a more complete example with text rendering, image loading, mouse tracking, and fullscreen toggle.

License

MIT