Updated: 2011/09/19 23:29:11 julian

libRUIN

libRUIN (Renderer for User Interfaces in Ncurses) is a rendering library for various XML-based user interface markup languages (such as XHTML or Mozilla XUL), using the Ncurses terminal control library as a rendering target. GNU Guile and the SDOM Scheme module are used as the "glue" that manages user input and event handling (as such, event handlers must currently be written in Guile Scheme; support for ECMAscript event handlers is being considered for inclusion). An application programmer passes an XML document (including, potentially, a set of CSS stylesheets) and an Ncurses WINDOW structure, and libRUIN paints the WINDOW according to the markup and CSS; the programmer may subsequently pass Ncurses-style input strings to that WINDOW via libRUIN, and libRUIN will handle the resulting event flows.

Development status

• Many simple XUL documents can be rendered
• Many complex XHTML documents, such as the ones in the W3C CSS2.1 Test Suite, including ones that involve automatic table layout, can be rendered
• User input is handled correctly and default handlers for several inputs (such as the TAB key to switch focus) are working
• API documentation is in place, in the form of a UNIX man page and a Texinfo manual; it is not, however, complete

Download libRUIN

The current development version of libRUIN is 0.2.0. This version is largely function-complete but has not undergone significant testing, and thus should not be considered for critical projects. The API is subject to flux and some parts will almost certainly be changed before a stable release is made. Nonetheless, we encourage you to download it and run through the test suite (and perhaps add to it yourself). See the README file in the distribution for more information.

• libruin-0.2.0.tar.gz
• libruin-0.2.0.tar.gz.sig
• libruin-0.1.4.tar.gz
• libruin-0.1.4.tar.gz.sig
• libruin-0.1.3.tar.gz
• libruin-0.1.3.tar.gz.sig
• libruin-0.1.2.tar.gz
• libruin-0.1.2.tar.gz.sig
• libruin-0.1.1.tar.gz
• libruin-0.1.1.tar.gz.sig

There are currently no stable releases of libRUIN.

Screenshots

Here are some pictures of libRUIN in action.

• Version 0.2.0

  • libruin-text-v0.2.0.png: Two examples, at different widths, of liBRUIN rendering the t051202-c26-psudo-nest-00-c test from the CSS2.1 Test Suite.

• Version 0.1.4

  • libruin-table-v0.1.4.png: A side-by-side comparison of libRUIN and Mozilla FireFox rendering the t0805-c5522-brdr-02-e test from the CSS2.1 Test Suite.

• Version 0.1.1

  • libruin-padding-v0.1.1.png: A side-by-side comparison of libRUIN and Mozilla FireFox rendering the t0804-c5510-padn-02-f test from the CSS2.1 Test Suite.

Links

libRUIN depends on (and includes in its distribution) the following Scheme modules, which may be of interest to developers doing XML and CSS work in Scheme:

• SDOM: An SXML-compatible DOM implementation
• SCSS: A parser and query system for Cascading Style Sheets

Mailing list

libRUIN has a mailing list provided by Savannah for discussion related to development. Visit the list info page for subscription information.

Documentation

An HTML version of the libRUIN documentation is available here.

License

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire web page is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.