goak

Go Application Kit is a small library for building cross-platform UI apps. It uses SDL3 for windowing, input, and GPU-accelerated rendering, with SDL_ttf for text, and focuses on rapid prototyping.

Features:

• Layout management inspired by Clay.h
• Handy utilities like named colors (Example, colors.LightGray)
• Themes through a central unified structured (External configuration may come soon)
• SDL3 rendering with resizable and HiDPI-aware windows
• Selectable SDL renderers, with software rendering as the default
• Embedded SDL3, SDL_ttf, and default font assets
• Native window icons from any standard Go image.Image
• Image components with contain, cover, stretch, and native-size fitting
• Unicode text inputs and multiline text areas with wrapping, line numbers, selection, clipboard editing, and horizontal/vertical scrolling
• Public facing retained-mode ui and custom-scene API for application- specific interfaces such as editors, canvases, and media tools

Run examples

go run ./examples/<example>

Check examples/demo/main.go for a widget/features showcase. The basic example also generates and installs a window icon entirely in Go code. The dispatch example shows how to bridge a background channel into UI updates safely. The content example demonstrates images, a text input, and a scrollable text area; toggle wrapping there to switch between wrapping and horizontal scrolling.

Build: go build -o bin/basic ./examples/basic. On Windows, optionally add -ldflags="-H windowsgui" to build a GUI executable without an accompanying console window; omit it during development to retain console logs and panic output.

Using the library

import (
	"github.com/tacf/goak"
	"github.com/tacf/goak/components"
	"github.com/tacf/goak/layout"
)

panel.CreateImage(layout.StaticPx(120), layout.StaticPx(80), sourceImage)

name := panel.CreateTextInput(
	layout.PercentOf(100),
	layout.StaticPx(36),
	"",
)
name.SetPlaceholder("Name")

notes := panel.CreateTextArea(
	layout.PercentOf(100),
	layout.StaticPx(180),
	"Long editable text...",
)
notes.SetWrap(true)
notes.SetLineNumbers(true)

Custom scenes

Applications with interfaces that do not fit retained widgets can implement goak.Scene. This gives the framework two integration levels:

• App.Run(ui) hosts Goak's retained components and automatic layout.
• App.RunScene(scene) hosts a custom interface while retaining Goak's window, renderer selection, dispatch queue, input normalization, HiDPI coordinates, clipboard, cursor, text-input lifecycle, and frame presentation.

Scenes receive renderer-pixel mouse coordinates and stable keyboard chords such as ctrl+shift+p. Implement SceneInitializer, SceneEventHandler, SceneUpdater, or SceneCloser only when those hooks are needed. Returning true from a quit event lets the application defer shutdown, for example to confirm unsaved work. The SDL renderer remains available through SceneContext.Renderer() as an advanced drawing escape hatch. See examples/scene for the minimal lifecycle.