Installation instructions

simpledisplay.d does not have any dependencies outside the operating system and color.d, so it should just work most the time, but there are a few caveats on some systems:

On Win32, you can pass -L/subsystem:windows if you don't want a console to be automatically allocated.

Please note when compiling on Win64, you need to explicitly list -Lgdi32.lib -Luser32.lib on the build command. If you want the Windows subsystem too, use -L/subsystem:windows -L/entry:mainCRTStartup.

If using ldc instead of dmd, use -L/entry:wmainCRTStartup instead of mainCRTStartup; note the "w".

I provided a mixin EnableWindowsSubsystem; helper to do those linker flags for you, but you still need to use dmd -m32mscoff or -m64 (which dub does by default too fyi). See EnableWindowsSubsystem for more information.

On Mac, when compiling with X11, you need XQuartz and -L-L/usr/X11R6/lib passed to dmd. If using the Cocoa implementation on Mac, you need to pass -L-framework -LCocoa to dmd. For OpenGL, add -L-framework -LOpenGL to the build command.

On Ubuntu, you might need to install X11 development libraries to successfully link.

$ sudo apt-get install libglc-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libx11-dev

Jump list

Don't worry, you don't have to read this whole documentation file!

Check out the event example and Pong example to get started quickly.

The main classes you may want to create are SimpleWindow, Timer, Image, and Sprite.

The main functions you'll want are setClipboardText and getClipboardText.

There are also platform-specific functions available such as XDisplayConnection and GetAtom for X11, among others.

See the examples and topics list below to learn more.

About this documentation

The goal here is to give some complete programs as overview examples first, then a look at each major feature with working examples first, then, finally, the inline class and method list will follow.

Scan for headers for a topic - they will visually stand out - you're interested in to get started quickly and feel free to copy and paste any example as a starting point for your program. I encourage you to learn the library by experimenting with the examples!

All examples are provided with no copyright restrictions whatsoever. You do not need to credit me or carry any kind of notice with the source if you copy and paste from them.

To get started, download simpledisplay.d and color.d to a working directory. Copy an example info a file called example.d and compile using the command given at the top of each example.

If you need help, email me: destructionator@gmail.com or IRC us, #d on Freenode (I am destructionator or adam_d_ruppe there). If you learn something that isn't documented, I appreciate pull requests on github to this file.

At points, I will talk about implementation details in the documentation. These are sometimes subject to change, but nevertheless useful to understand what is really going on. You can learn more about some of the referenced things by searching the web for info about using them from C. You can always look at the source of simpledisplay.d too for the most authoritative source on its specific implementation. If you disagree with how I did something, please contact me so we can discuss it!

Using with fibers

simpledisplay can be used with core.thread.Fiber, but be warned many of the functions can use a significant amount of stack space. I recommend at least 64 KB stack for each fiber (just set through the second argument to Fiber's constructor).

Topics

Windows

The SimpleWindow class is simpledisplay's flagship feature. It represents a single window on the user's screen.

You may create multiple windows, if the underlying platform supports it. You may check static if(multipleWindowsSupported) at compile time, or catch exceptions thrown by SimpleWindow's constructor at runtime to handle those cases.

A single running event loop will handle as many windows as needed.

Event loops

The simpledisplay event loop is designed to handle common cases easily while being extensible for more advanced cases, or replaceable by other libraries.

The most common scenario is creating a window, then calling window.eventLoop when setup is complete. You can pass several handlers to the eventLoop method right there:

// dmd example.d simpledisplay.d color.d
import arsd.simpledisplay;
void main() {
	auto window = new SimpleWindow(200, 200);
	window.eventLoop(0,
	  delegate (dchar) { /* got a character key press */ }
	);
}

On Linux, the event loop is implemented with the epoll system call for efficiency an extensibility to other files. On Windows, it runs a traditional GetMessage + DispatchMessage loop, with a call to SleepEx in each iteration to allow the thread to enter an alertable wait state regularly, primarily so Overlapped I/O callbacks will get a chance to run.

On Linux, simpledisplay also supports my (deprecated) arsd.eventloop module. Compile your program, including the eventloop.d file, with the -version=with_eventloop switch.

It should be possible to integrate simpledisplay with vibe.d as well, though I haven't tried.

You can also run the event loop independently of a window, with EventLoop.get.run, though since it will automatically terminate when there are no open windows, you will want to have one anyway.

Notification area (aka systray) icons

Notification area icons are currently implemented on X11 and Windows. On X11, it defaults to using libnotify to show bubbles, if available, and will do a custom bubble window if not. You can version=without_libnotify to avoid this run-time dependency, if you like.

See the NotificationAreaIcon class.

Input handling

There are event handlers for low-level keyboard and mouse events, and higher level handlers for character events.

See SimpleWindow.handleCharEvent, SimpleWindow.handleKeyEvent, SimpleWindow.handleMouseEvent.

2d Drawing

To draw on your window, use the SimpleWindow.draw method. It returns a ScreenPainter structure with drawing methods.

Important: ScreenPainter double-buffers and will not actually update the window until its destructor is run. Always ensure the painter instance goes out-of-scope before proceeding. You can do this by calling it inside an event handler, a timer callback, or an small scope inside main. For example:

// dmd example.d simpledisplay.d color.d
import arsd.simpledisplay;
void main() {
	auto window = new SimpleWindow(200, 200);
	{ // introduce sub-scope
		auto painter = window.draw(); // begin drawing
		/* draw here */
		painter.outlineColor = Color.red;
		painter.fillColor = Color.black;
		painter.drawRectangle(Point(0, 0), 200, 200);
	} // end scope, calling `painter`'s destructor, drawing to the screen.
	window.eventLoop(0); // handle events
}

Painting is done based on two color properties, a pen and a brush.

At this time, the 2d drawing does not support alpha blending, except for the Sprite class. If you need that, use a 2d OpenGL context instead.

FIXME Add example of 2d opengl drawing here.

3d Drawing (or 2d with OpenGL)

simpledisplay can create OpenGL contexts on your window. It works quite differently than 2d drawing.

Note that it is still possible to draw 2d on top of an OpenGL window, using the draw method, though I don't recommend it.

To start, you create a SimpleWindow with OpenGL enabled by passing the argument OpenGlOptions.yes to the constructor.

Next, you set window.redrawOpenGlScene to a delegate which draws your frame.

To force a redraw of the scene, call window.redrawOpenGlSceneNow() or to queue a redraw after processing the next batch of pending events, use window.redrawOpenGlSceneSoon.

simpledisplay supports both old-style glBegin and newer-style shader-based code all through its built-in bindings. See the next section of the docs to see a shader-based program.

This example program will draw a rectangle on your window using old-style OpenGL with a pulsating color:

import arsd.simpledisplay;

void main() {
	auto window = new SimpleWindow(800, 600, "opengl 1", OpenGlOptions.yes, Resizability.allowResizing);

	float otherColor = 0.0;
	float colorDelta = 0.05;

	window.redrawOpenGlScene = delegate() {
		glLoadIdentity();
		glBegin(GL_QUADS);

		glColor3f(1.0, otherColor, 0);
		glVertex3f(-0.8, -0.8, 0);

		glColor3f(1.0, otherColor, 1.0);
		glVertex3f(0.8, -0.8, 0);

		glColor3f(0, 1.0, otherColor);
		glVertex3f(0.8, 0.8, 0);

		glColor3f(otherColor, 0, 1.0);
		glVertex3f(-0.8, 0.8, 0);

		glEnd();
	};

	window.eventLoop(50, () {
		otherColor += colorDelta;
		if(otherColor > 1.0) {
			otherColor = 1.0;
			colorDelta = -0.05;
		}
		if(otherColor < 0) {
			otherColor = 0;
			colorDelta = 0.05;
		}
		// at the end of the timer, we have to request a redraw
		// or we won't see the changes.
		window.redrawOpenGlSceneSoon();
	});
}

My arsd.game module has some helpers for using old-style opengl to make 2D windows too. See: arsd.game.create2dWindow.

Modern OpenGL

simpledisplay's opengl support, by default, is for "legacy" opengl. To use "modern" functions, you must opt-into them with a little more setup. But the library provides helpers for this too.

This example program shows how you can set up a shader to draw a rectangle:

1 import arsd.simpledisplay;
2 
3 // based on https://learnopengl.com/Getting-started/Hello-Triangle
4 
5 void main() {
6 	// First thing we do, before creating the window, is declare what version we want.
7 	setOpenGLContextVersion(3, 3);
8 	// turning off legacy compat is required to use version 3.3 and newer
9 	openGLContextCompatible = false;
10 
11 	uint VAO;
12 	OpenGlShader shader;
13 
14 	// then we can create the window.
15 	auto window = new SimpleWindow(800, 600, "opengl 3", OpenGlOptions.yes, Resizability.allowResizing);
16 
17 	// additional setup needs to be done when it is visible, simpledisplay offers a property
18 	// for exactly that:
19 	window.visibleForTheFirstTime = delegate() {
20 		// now with the window loaded, we can start loading the modern opengl functions.
21 
22 		// you MUST set the context first.
23 		window.setAsCurrentOpenGlContext;
24 		// then load the remainder of the library
25 		gl3.loadDynamicLibrary();
26 
27 		// now you can create the shaders, etc.
28 		shader = new OpenGlShader(
29 			OpenGlShader.Source(GL_VERTEX_SHADER, `
30 				#version 330 core
31 				layout (location = 0) in vec3 aPos;
32 				void main() {
33 					gl_Position = vec4(aPos.x, aPos.y, aPos.z, 1.0);
34 				}
35 			`),
36 			OpenGlShader.Source(GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER, `
37 				#version 330 core
38 				out vec4 FragColor;
39 				uniform vec4 mycolor;
40 				void main() {
41 					FragColor = mycolor;
42 				}
43 			`),
44 		);
45 
46 		// and do whatever other setup you want.
47 
48 		float[] vertices = [
49 			0.5f,  0.5f, 0.0f,  // top right
50 			0.5f, -0.5f, 0.0f,  // bottom right
51 			-0.5f, -0.5f, 0.0f,  // bottom left
52 			-0.5f,  0.5f, 0.0f   // top left
53 		];
54 		uint[] indices = [  // note that we start from 0!
55 			0, 1, 3,  // first Triangle
56 			1, 2, 3   // second Triangle
57 		];
58 		uint VBO, EBO;
59 		glGenVertexArrays(1, &VAO);
60 		// bind the Vertex Array Object first, then bind and set vertex buffer(s), and then configure vertex attributes(s).
61 		glBindVertexArray(VAO);
62 
63 		glGenBuffers(1, &VBO);
64 		glGenBuffers(1, &EBO);
65 
66 		glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, VBO);
67 		glBufferDataSlice(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertices, GL_STATIC_DRAW);
68 
69 		glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, EBO);
70 		glBufferDataSlice(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, indices, GL_STATIC_DRAW);
71 
72 		glVertexAttribPointer(0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 3 * float.sizeof, null);
73 		glEnableVertexAttribArray(0);
74 
75 		// the library will set the initial viewport and trigger our first draw,
76 		// so these next two lines are NOT needed. they are just here as comments
77 		// to show what would happen next.
78 
79 		// glViewport(0, 0, window.width, window.height);
80 		// window.redrawOpenGlSceneNow();
81 	};
82 
83 	// this delegate is called any time the window needs to be redrawn or if you call `window.redrawOpenGlSceneNow;`
84 	// it is our render method.
85 	window.redrawOpenGlScene = delegate() {
86 		glClearColor(0.2f, 0.3f, 0.3f, 1.0f);
87 		glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
88 
89 		glUseProgram(shader.shaderProgram);
90 
91 		// the shader helper class has methods to set uniforms too
92 		shader.uniforms.mycolor.opAssign(1.0, 1.0, 0, 1.0);
93 
94 		glBindVertexArray(VAO);
95 		glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, 6, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, null);
96 	};
97 
98 	window.eventLoop(0);
99 }

This program only draws the image once because that's all that is necessary, since it is static. If you want to do animation, you might set a pulse timer (which would be a fixed max fps, not necessarily consistent) or use a render loop in a separate thread.

Vulkan

See a couple examples ported from GLFW to simpledisplay using the erupted vulkan bindings:

https://github.com/adamdruppe/VulkanizeDSdpy

https://github.com/adamdruppe/VulkanSdpyDemo/tree/demo

Displaying images

You can also load PNG images using arsd.png.

// dmd example.d simpledisplay.d color.d png.d
import arsd.simpledisplay;
import arsd.png;

void main() {
	auto image = Image.fromMemoryImage(readPng("image.png"));
	displayImage(image);
}

Compile with dmd example.d simpledisplay.d png.d.

If you find an image file which is a valid png that arsd.png fails to load, please let me know. In the mean time of fixing the bug, you can probably convert the file into an easier-to-load format. Be sure to turn OFF png interlacing, as that isn't supported. Other things to try would be making the image smaller, or trying 24 bit truecolor mode with an alpha channel.

Sprites

The Sprite class is used to make images on the display server for fast blitting to screen. This is especially important to use to support fast drawing of repeated images on a remote X11 link.

Sprite is also the only facility that currently supports alpha blending without using OpenGL .

Clipboard

The free functions getClipboardText and setClipboardText consist of simpledisplay's cross-platform clipboard support at this time.

It also has helpers for handling X-specific events.

Drag and Drop

See enableDragAndDrop and draggable.

Timers

There are two timers in simpledisplay: one is the pulse timeout you can set on the call to window.eventLoop, and the other is a customizable class, Timer.

The pulse timeout is used by setting a non-zero interval as the first argument to eventLoop function and adding a zero-argument delegate to handle the pulse.

import arsd.simpledisplay;

void main() {
	auto window = new SimpleWindow(400, 400);
	// every 100 ms, it will draw a random line
	// on the window.
	window.eventLoop(100, {
		auto painter = window.draw();

		import std.random;
		// random color
		painter.outlineColor = Color(uniform(0, 256), uniform(0, 256), uniform(0, 256));
		// random line
		painter.drawLine(
			Point(uniform(0, window.width), uniform(0, window.height)),
			Point(uniform(0, window.width), uniform(0, window.height)));

	});
}

The Timer class works similarly, but is created separately from the event loop. (It still fires through the event loop, though.) You may make as many instances of Timer as you wish.

The pulse timer and instances of the Timer class may be combined at will.

import arsd.simpledisplay;

void main() {
	auto window = new SimpleWindow(400, 400);
	auto timer = new Timer(1000, delegate {
		auto painter = window.draw();
		painter.clear();
	});

	window.eventLoop(0);
}

Timers are currently only implemented on Windows, using SetTimer and Linux, using timerfd_create. These deliver timeout messages through your application event loop.

OS-specific helpers

simpledisplay carries a lot of code to help implement itself without extra dependencies, and much of this code is available for you too, so you may extend the functionality yourself.

See also: xwindows.d from my github.

Extending with OS-specific functionality

handleNativeEvent and handleNativeGlobalEvent.

Integration with other libraries

Integration with a third-party event loop is possible.

On Linux, you might want to support both terminal input and GUI input. You can do this by using simpledisplay together with eventloop.d and terminal.d.

GUI widgets

simpledisplay does not provide GUI widgets such as text areas, buttons, checkboxes, etc. It only gives basic windows, the ability to draw on it, receive input from it, and access native information for extension. You may write your own gui widgets with these, but you don't have to because I already did for you!

Download minigui.d from my github repository and add it to your project. minigui builds these things on top of simpledisplay and offers its own Window class (and subclasses) to use that wrap SimpleWindow, adding a new event and drawing model that is hookable by subwidgets, represented by their own classes.

Migrating to minigui from simpledisplay is often easy though, because they both use the same ScreenPainter API, and the same simpledisplay events are available, if you want them. (Though you may like using the minigui model, especially if you are familiar with writing web apps in the browser with Javascript.)

minigui still needs a lot of work to be finished at this time, but it already offers a number of useful classes.

Platform-specific tips and tricks

X tips

On X11, if you set an environment variable, ARSD_SCALING_FACTOR, you can control the per-monitor DPI scaling returned to the application. The format is ARSD_SCALING_FACTOR=2;1, for example, to set 2x scaling on your first monitor and 1x scaling on your second monitor. Support for this was added on March 22, 2022, the dub 10.7 release.

Windows tips

You can add icons or manifest files to your exe using a resource file.

To create a Windows .ico file, use the gimp or something. I'll write a helper program later.

Create yourapp.rc:

1 ICON filename.ico
CREATEPROCESS_MANIFEST_RESOURCE_ID RT_MANIFEST "YourApp.exe.manifest"

And yourapp.exe.manifest:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
<assemblyIdentity
    version="1.0.0.0"
    processorArchitecture="*"
    name="CompanyName.ProductName.YourApplication"
    type="win32"
/>
<description>Your application description here.</description>
<dependency>
    <dependentAssembly>
	<assemblyIdentity
	    type="win32"
	    name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
	    version="6.0.0.0"
	    processorArchitecture="*"
	    publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
	    language="*"
	/>
    </dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
<application xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
	<windowsSettings>
		<dpiAware xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">true/pm</dpiAware> <!-- old style -->
		<dpiAwareness xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2016/WindowsSettings">PerMonitorV2</dpiAwareness> <!-- new style -->
		<!-- Un-comment the line below to enable GDI-scaling in this project. This will enable text -->
		<!-- to render crisply in DPI-unaware contexts -->
		<!--<gdiScaling xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2017/WindowsSettings">true</gdiScaling>-->
	</windowsSettings>
</application>
</assembly>

You can also just distribute yourapp.exe.manifest as a separate file alongside yourapp.exe, or link it in to the exe with linker command lines /manifest:embed and /manifestinput:yourfile.exe.manifest.

Doing this lets you opt into various new things since Windows XP.

See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/SbsCs/application-manifests

Tips

Name conflicts

simpledisplay has a lot of symbols and more are liable to be added without notice, since it contains its own bindings as needed to accomplish its goals. Some of these may conflict with other bindings you use. If so, you can use a static import in D, possibly combined with a selective import:

static import sdpy = arsd.simpledisplay;
import arsd.simpledisplay : SimpleWindow;

void main() {
	auto window = new SimpleWindow();
	sdpy.EventLoop.get.run();
}

Developer notes

I don't have a Mac, so that code isn't maintained. I would like to have a Cocoa implementation though.

The NativeSimpleWindowImplementation and NativeScreenPainterImplementation both suck. If I was rewriting it, I wouldn't do it that way again.

This file must not have any more required dependencies. If you need bindings, add them right to this file. Once it gets into druntime and is there for a while, remove bindings from here to avoid conflicts (or put them in an appropriate version block so it continues to just work on old dmd), but wait a couple releases before making the transition so this module remains usable with older versions of dmd.

You may have optional dependencies if needed by putting them in version blocks or template functions. You may also extend the module with other modules with UFCS without actually editing this - that is nice to do if you can.

Try to make functions work the same way across operating systems. I typically make it thinly wrap Windows, then emulate that on Linux.

A goal of this is to keep a gui hello world to less than 250 KB. This means avoiding Phobos! So try to avoid it.

See more comments throughout the source.

I realize this file is fairly large, but over half that is just bindings at the bottom or documentation at the top. Some of the classes are a bit big too, but hopefully easy to understand. I suggest you jump around the source by looking for a particular declaration you're interested in, like class SimpleWindow using your editor's search function, then look at one piece at a time.