Book Image

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go

By : Andrew Williams
Book Image

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go

By: Andrew Williams

Overview of this book

Go is often compared to C++ when it comes to low-level programming and implementations that require faster processing, such as Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). In fact, many claim that Go is superior to C++ in terms of its concurrency and ease of use. Most graphical application toolkits, though, are still written using C or C++, and so they don't enjoy the benefits of using a modern programming language such as Go. This guide to programming GUIs with Go 1.11 explores the various toolkits available, including UI, Walk, Shiny, and Fyne. The book compares the vision behind each project to help you pick the right approach for your project. Each framework is described in detail, outlining how you can build performant applications that users will love. To aid you further in creating applications using these emerging technologies, you'll be able to easily refer to code samples and screenshots featured in the book. In addition to toolkit-specific discussions, you'll cover more complex topics, such as how to structure growing graphical applications, and how cross-platform applications can integrate with each desktop operating system to create a seamless user experience. By delving into techniques and best practices for organizing and scaling Go-based graphical applications, you'll also glimpse Go's impressive concurrency system. In the concluding chapters, you'll discover how to distribute to the main desktop marketplaces and distribution channels. By the end of this book, you'll be a confident GUI developer who can use the Go language to boost the performance of your applications.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Comparison of GUI Toolkits
Index

Rendering and platform support


The core of the Nuklear library's flexibility is its modular design. The library doesn't render to screen nor does it manage user input; such functionality is provided by modules that accompany the library. An application will typically utilize the core Nuklear library for widgets and layout as well as one of its render modules to control the opening of windows, rendering, and handling user input.

Rendering modules

The Nuklear project includes many rendering modules that provide support for various different environments or operating systems. At the time of writing, you can choose from the following backends:

  • Windows:
    • Graphics Device Interface (GDI)
    • GDI+
    • Direct3D (D3D)
  • Linux or Unix:
    • X11
    • X11 OpenGL
  • Games development:
    • Allegro
  • Cross-platform development:
    • Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)
    • Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML)
    • Graphics Library Framework (GLFW)

Some of the renderers are 3D accelerated and others aren't, some focus on embedded and low power devices, others for...