3 ms·

The Story Behind Fenster

72 points by hamdouni 2y ago

immibis 2y ago
You might want to use CLOCK_MONOTONIC on POSIX or changing the system time will screw up the refresh rate or freeze the window completely.
- teo_zero 2y ago
  The application can handle it changing if (ms > 0) fenster_sleep(ms); to if (ms > 0 && ms <= 1000/60) fenster_sleep(ms);
  - immibis 2y ago
    Wouldn't you rather make it correct to begin with, rather than introducing hacks to work around incorrectness?
mrpippy 2y ago
In the Mac/AppKit implementation it would be interesting to try using wantsUpdateLayer: and updateLayer: instead of drawRect. That should be more efficient.
felipefar 2y ago
Nice work! It wouldn't be much work to support Android with this library and keep the single source file, since the addition of native_app_glue. It'd require just an AndroidManifest.xml, and the API communication can be done by calling the functions provided by the NDK or in the worst case by calling JNI.
password4321 2y ago
TIL: Our goal here is to have a framebuffer for a single window that would run and look the same on Linux, Windows and macOS. Basically re-implementing enough SDL from scratch to run Doom, nice!
onetom 2y ago
Would it work on NetBSD/OpenBSD/FreeBSD/GhostBSD too? Because if it does, it would worth mentioning it in the readme. In Plan 9, Rio, the window manager, does a similar thing; it exposes a framebuffer to the process running in a window, simply as the /dev/draw device file, iirc.
unwind 2y ago
Very nice and very straight-forward. I really liked the part on getting "Doom" to run, impressive how easy such porting is now! Any low-level C is kind of catnip for the old SO-powered part of my brain, but did not spend a lot of time and got a lot of confidence.i did find this bug: memset(f->buf, rgb, f->width*f->height*sizeoof(*f->buf)); This will not work to set a color in the general case (`rgb` is `uint32_t`) since `memset()` only uses the lower `CHAR_BIT` bits of the value, it is setting the memory byte by byte. For black or white it will work! :)
Lerc 2y ago
This has popped up because Microui+fenster=Small GUI https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41477446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41477446 Was posted in the last day. In that thread I suggested that API compatibility would be the way to go for more esoteric platforms, Since there's already comments here about BSD and Android targets. All you need is struct fenster { const char *title; /* window title */ const int width; /* window width */ const int height; /* window height */ uint32_t *buf; /* window pixels, 24-bit RGB, row by row, pixel by pixel */ int keys[256]; /* keys are mostly ASCII, but arrows are 17..20 */ int mod; /* mod is 4 bits mask, ctrl=1, shift=2, alt=4, meta=8 */ int x; /* mouse X coordinate */ int y; /* mouse Y coordinate */ int mouse; /* 0 = no buttons pressed, 1 = left button pressed */ }; int fenster_open(struct fenster *f) int fenster_loop(struct fenster *f) void fenster_close(struct fenster *f) void fenster_sleep(int ms) int64_t fenster_time() fenster_pixel(f, x, y) uint32_t px = fenster_pixel(f, x, y); A bit more for audio, but that's really it's own little API As a mimimal API for doing interactive apps, it's hard to beat. I can see hobbyists who make their own operating systems taking advantage of this to get things working quickly.
igtztorrero 2y ago
WASN + Fester, for Browser, it is possible?

72 points by hamdouni 2y ago

You might want to use CLOCK_MONOTONIC on POSIX or changing the system time will screw up the refresh rate or freeze the window completely.

teo_zero 2y ago
The application can handle it changing if (ms > 0) fenster_sleep(ms); to if (ms > 0 && ms <= 1000/60) fenster_sleep(ms);
- immibis 2y ago
  Wouldn't you rather make it correct to begin with, rather than introducing hacks to work around incorrectness?

mrpippy 2y ago

In the Mac/AppKit implementation it would be interesting to try using wantsUpdateLayer: and updateLayer: instead of drawRect. That should be more efficient.

felipefar 2y ago

Nice work! It wouldn't be much work to support Android with this library and keep the single source file, since the addition of native_app_glue. It'd require just an AndroidManifest.xml, and the API communication can be done by calling the functions provided by the NDK or in the worst case by calling JNI.

password4321 2y ago

TIL: Our goal here is to have a framebuffer for a single window that would run and look the same on Linux, Windows and macOS. Basically re-implementing enough SDL from scratch to run Doom, nice!

onetom 2y ago

Would it work on NetBSD/OpenBSD/FreeBSD/GhostBSD too? Because if it does, it would worth mentioning it in the readme. In Plan 9, Rio, the window manager, does a similar thing; it exposes a framebuffer to the process running in a window, simply as the /dev/draw device file, iirc.

unwind 2y ago

Very nice and very straight-forward. I really liked the part on getting "Doom" to run, impressive how easy such porting is now! Any low-level C is kind of catnip for the old SO-powered part of my brain, but did not spend a lot of time and got a lot of confidence.i did find this bug: memset(f->buf, rgb, f->width*f->height*sizeoof(*f->buf)); This will not work to set a color in the general case (`rgb` is `uint32_t`) since `memset()` only uses the lower `CHAR_BIT` bits of the value, it is setting the memory byte by byte. For black or white it will work! :)

Lerc 2y ago

This has popped up because Microui+fenster=Small GUI https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41477446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41477446 Was posted in the last day. In that thread I suggested that API compatibility would be the way to go for more esoteric platforms, Since there's already comments here about BSD and Android targets. All you need is struct fenster { const char *title; /* window title */ const int width; /* window width */ const int height; /* window height */ uint32_t *buf; /* window pixels, 24-bit RGB, row by row, pixel by pixel */ int keys[256]; /* keys are mostly ASCII, but arrows are 17..20 */ int mod; /* mod is 4 bits mask, ctrl=1, shift=2, alt=4, meta=8 */ int x; /* mouse X coordinate */ int y; /* mouse Y coordinate */ int mouse; /* 0 = no buttons pressed, 1 = left button pressed */ }; int fenster_open(struct fenster *f) int fenster_loop(struct fenster *f) void fenster_close(struct fenster *f) void fenster_sleep(int ms) int64_t fenster_time() fenster_pixel(f, x, y) uint32_t px = fenster_pixel(f, x, y); A bit more for audio, but that's really it's own little API As a mimimal API for doing interactive apps, it's hard to beat. I can see hobbyists who make their own operating systems taking advantage of this to get things working quickly.

igtztorrero 2y ago

WASN + Fester, for Browser, it is possible?