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Low-overhead GUI toolkit for Linux w/o X11?

Chris Mellon arkanes at gmail.com
Mon Nov 5 10:39:43 EST 2007 
On Nov 3, 2007 6:06 PM, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
> On 2007-11-03, David Bolen <db3l.net at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> writes:
> >
> >> I'm looking for GUI toolkits that work with directly with the
> >> Linux frambuffer (no X11).  It's an embedded device with
> >> limited resources, and getting X out of the picture would be a
> >> big plus.
> >
> > Sounds like a reasonably modern "embedded" system since traditionally
> > neither X (nor Python) would likely have even been plausible in such
> > environments.
>
> Yes, it's "modern" enough to run Linux/X11 -- horsepower-wise
> it's sort of in the PDA class of devices.  wxWidgets has been
> tried, but it's pretty sluggish. Hence the search for something
> a littler lighter weight.  Using Python is probably going to be
> a little bit of a stretch, but using open-source libraries and
> something like Python for the application langauge seems to be
> an important part of the business model.
>

There's a DFB port of wx, although I'm not sure how much attention
it's received lately. I know it's been actually used for at least one
application. Gtk can also run directly on a framebuffer - that's what
openmoko does, for example.

> > Depending on the higher level GUI functionality you require
>
> That's still a bit up in the air.  Routines to render text
> would be nice, as would sprite graphics.  I don't think text
> entry or much in the way of windowing is required.
>

Sounds like a full scale widget toolkit is quite a bit heavier than
you need, though.
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