sfw::GUI - A fork of "SFML Widgets", a small & simple SFML-based GUI

Original (upstream) author: Alexandre Bodelot alexandre.bodelot@gmail.com

License: MIT License (See the LICENSE file.)

Changes to the original:

• Adapted to the upcoming SFML v3 API
• Compiling as C++20 now (to embrace recent C++ features; SFML3 is C++17 already)
• Richer, more flexible API, new features, bugfixes, improvements
• Default quick-start assets included (and removed the non-free ones)
• Windows build (MSVC & GCC (via w64devkit, so MingW should also work))
• Auto download & setup the latest SFML-master locally (mostly for GitHub workflows)
• Reshuffled repo tree (to allow growth & to help integrating into other projects)

For other (both planned and completed) changes see the issues!

Quick Summary

• Moderately sized package with no external dependencies beyond SFML
• Simple, straightforward, but versatile API
• Visual styling via spritesheets (small image files to customize borders, markers etc.)
• Simple optional callbacks for "update" actions (supporting both []() and [](Widget*) lambda signatures) (Any other event handlers can also be overridden in derived widgets, of course.)
• Easy layouts: automatically (and dynamically re)align widgets
• No CMake. (Well, since I never got to learn it, now I just declare this a feature. ;) Use e.g. TGUI if you don't feel warm and cozy without CMake.)

Build

GCC/CLANG:

• Run make to build the lib (in the lib folder) and the example/demo/test executables.

MSVC (Windows):

• Run nmake -f Makefile.msvc for the same.

(See the Makefiles for options.)

Use

0. Integrate (via env. vars, or just copy) the include & lib dirs to your project. (Copy the asset dir, too, if you want to use the stock defaults.)
1. #include "sfw/GUI.hpp".
2. Optionally (but typically) customize the theme: the styling texture image, font, colors etc.
3. Create the top-level GUI manager object, connecting it to your SFML window (like: sfw::GUI myGUI(window);), usually with your custom theme config (sfw::GUI myGUI(window, myConfig);)
4. Add containers (layouts) and widgets with add(sfw::SomeWidget(...)), or if you prefer: add(new sfw::OtherWidget) calls, set their properties (typically with method chaining, like add(new TextBox)->set("hi")->setCallback(...)) etc. Note: widget objects will be managed (e.g. deleted) implicitly.
5. Pass events to the GUI (in your app's event loop): myGUI.process(event);.
6. Draw the GUI (in your frame refresh loop; i.e. the event loop in single-treaded apps): myGUI.render();.
7. Have fun!

More...

• a minimal example (or another, with a polling event loop)
• a fairly comprehensive example: demo.cpp
• see the headers in the include dir for an authoritative reference (they're easy to read)