Setting Window Position / Location when launching

[itsyoshio]

How can i set the location, where the GUI will spawn (on any or a specific OS)?
At best i'd like to Center it on the Screen.

On my Mac the Gui always spawns in the botton left corner (what i assume to be 0,0), however it's also moved down by half its height.

Thanks

[AndyObtiva]

In case you noticed in the commit I tied to this Issue on Jul 14 ("Add window position methods and position changed event"), this is an upcoming feature that is coming to LibUI soon. Once it is released, I will be able to include it in Glimmer DSL for LibUI.

[nexxus-vi]

Hi @AndyObtiva, is this feature live for Glimmer DSL for LibUI?

[AndyObtiva]

I just saw this email. Sorry, I had a crazy few weeks as I was moving.

I am not home right now, but I will look into this on my laptop as soon as I get home just to be sure.

[AndyObtiva]

Sorry about the delay. I was prepping for my trip to Chicago all of last week to give a 2-hour workshop at RubyConf 2024 tomorrow on How To Build Basic Desktop Applications in Ruby.

The answer to your question is yes and no.

There is a newer version of the libui binding that supports setting the window position, but it is still in pre mode. Unfortunately, when I tested it, it had a bug caused by the underlying libui-ng C library, which still hasn't been fixed: libui-ng/libui-ng#252

The current final version of the libui binding (0.1.2), which is included in glimmer-dsl-libui, does not support setting the window position.

So, we need to wait some more before we get window positioning support as the C libui-ng bug mentioned above has to be fixed first.

I am sorry again about the delay. For whatever reason, the C libui-ng project slowed down in its maintenance significantly. I hope it would pick up pace again eventually.

In the meantime, my recommendation will be to check out other Glimmer alternatives, like the new Glimmer DSL for WX (wxWidgets): https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-wx. The library is still very new and incomplete, but it supports cross-platform native GUI, so once all Glimmer features are added (like component support, scaffolding, and data-binding) it should become the future of native GUI development in MRI Ruby (CRuby) given that wxWidgets is a very mature GUI toolkit and is 100% feature complete (as opposed to LibUI, which is an incomplete alpha). Glimmer DSL for LibUI will continue to get maintained, but there are no guarantees as to when more features are added to its underlying C libui-ng library.

[petabyt]

If you're interested, I have an experimental fork where I've merged PR 261 and added some other features/tweaks:
https://github.com/petabyt/libui-dev

[kojix2]

@petabyt
Thank you for your comment. I will consider releasing a pre-version gem (Ruby package) that contains the shared library downloaded from the libui-dev release page.

[petabyt]

The one from the release page is old, it needs to be updated. Would x86_64 Mac/Linux/win be fine? I could probably also do arm64 Linux.

[AndyObtiva]

I just noticed I added the wrong link for Glimmer DSL for wxWidgets in my last comment. Here is the right one: https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-wx

@petabyt We currently have support for Mac x86_64 & Mac ARM64, Linux x86_64, and Windows x86_64 (we had WIndows x86_32 in the past too I believe, but I don't think it's maintained anymore, and it is not required anymore anyways). There was some effort on supporting Linux ARM64 (e.g. Raspberry Pi) in the Ruby libui binding, but it hasn't been finished yet as far as I know: kojix2/LibUI#47

[petabyt]

@kojix2 Added a new release: https://github.com/petabyt/libui-dev/releases/tag/5-beta

[kojix2]

Thank you.
I will add libui-dev to the Rakefile and release a pre gem packing libui-dev.

[kojix2]

@petabyt
I Added a task to the Ruby LibUI Rakefile (which is a helper script similar to Makefile) to download the libui-dev shared libraries.

If there is a shared library for Windows, that would be even better.

https://github.com/petabyt/libui-dev/blob/d48d00cbf00f41b030480d45aea752d8572662ff/.github/workflows/build.yml#L59

https://github.com/kojix2/libui-ng/blob/f0d51c1fa8997de833cb70ec53186cce711dfa42/.github/workflows/pre-build.yml#L56

In the Northern Hemisphere, the days are colder, and sunsets come earlier. Wishing everyone warmth and wellness.

[petabyt]

Would some kind of nightly release be better? Or is there a better way of publishing builds?

[kojix2]

Artifacts uploaded by GitHub Actions will be available for download via nightly.link.
So you don't have to worry about nightly builds.
Just maintain your CI and we'll be happy.

https://github.com/oprypin/nightly.link

I learned this approach using the “nightly.link” service from cody, the developer of libui-ng.