ltk/README.md

ltk

ltk is a public Rust UI toolkit for Wayland applications.

It is developed by Liberux as part of the Eydos stack, where it powers shell and application surfaces, but it is published as a reusable library for third-party developers building their own Wayland software.

Being written in Rust is also part of the project's value proposition:

• memory safety without a garbage collector
• predictable resource lifetimes through ownership and borrowing
• good control over allocations and data movement in rendering-heavy code
• a strong fit for low-level UI, graphics, and system-integration work

For a Wayland toolkit, that combination is useful in practice: it reduces an entire class of memory-management bugs common in lower-level UI stacks while still allowing tight control over performance-sensitive paths.

What It Is

ltk is a lightweight, declarative toolkit with an Elm-shaped model:

• implement App
• return an Element<Msg> tree from view()
• update your state in update()
• run the event loop with ltk::run(app)

The runtime handles layout, drawing, input dispatch, focus, overlays, and backend selection between GLES and software rendering.

What It Is Not

ltk is not:

• a browser UI toolkit
• a cross-platform desktop toolkit
• a general-purpose web-style framework

Today it is specifically a Wayland toolkit. If you are building native Wayland applications, panels, launchers, lock screens, or other shell-adjacent surfaces, it is in scope. If you need Windows, macOS, or browser targets, it is not.

Project Status

ltk is a public library intended for third-party use, but it is still shaped by real production needs inside the Liberux / Eydos ecosystem.

That means:

• the API is usable for external applications today
• the project is optimized first for native Wayland workloads
• some advanced APIs are still more shell-oriented than app-oriented
• public documentation and examples are present, but the project is not trying to present itself as a cross-platform beginner toolkit

If you are evaluating ltk for a third-party application, the right mental model is "public Wayland toolkit with production consumers" rather than "experimental demo crate".

Why Third Parties Might Use It

ltk is designed around a few practical goals:

• low idle wakeups and event-driven redraws
• partial redraws and damage tracking
• a simple declarative tree instead of retained widgets
• direct support for normal windows, layer-shell, and ext-session-lock surfaces
• a runtime-free core (ltk::core::UiSurface) for embedding layout and drawing without ltk::run()

This makes it especially relevant for:

• Wayland applications
• mobile-first Linux shells
• launchers and dashboards
• greeters and lock screens
• compositor-side or embedded UI surfaces

Quick Start

Add ltk to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
ltk = { path = "../ltk" }

Minimal app:

use ltk::{ App, Element, button, column, spacer, text };

#[derive(Clone)]
enum Msg
{
    Increment,
}

struct CounterApp
{
    value: u32,
}

impl App for CounterApp
{
    type Message = Msg;

    fn view( &self ) -> Element<Msg>
    {
        column::<Msg>()
            .padding( 32.0 )
            .spacing( 16.0 )
            .center_y( true )
            .push( text( "Hello from ltk" ).size( 28.0 ) )
            .push( text( format!( "Count: {}", self.value ) ).size( 18.0 ) )
            .push( spacer() )
            .push( button( "Increment" ).on_press( Msg::Increment ) )
            .into()
    }

    fn update( &mut self, msg: Msg )
    {
        match msg
        {
            Msg::Increment => self.value += 1,
        }
    }
}

fn main()
{
    ltk::run( CounterApp { value: 0 } );
}

Requirements

ltk currently assumes:

• Rust 1.85 or newer (the toolchain shipped with Debian stable; declared as rust-version in Cargo.toml).
• A running Wayland session — there is no X11 backend.
• System headers for libwayland, libegl and libxkbcommon at compile time. On Debian / Ubuntu:

  sudo apt-get install libwayland-dev libegl-dev libxkbcommon-dev pkg-config
  

• A usable system font (fonts-sora, fonts-liberation, fonts-dejavu, …). If none is installed ltk falls back to an embedded Sora Regular build with a stderr warning.
• A theme named default, installed system-wide (the ltk-theme-default Debian package drops it under /usr/share/ltk/themes/default/) or exposed through LTK_THEMES_DIR for development.

Rendering backend selection is automatic:

• GLES when EGL is available (every modern Wayland compositor).
• Software fallback otherwise.
• Set LTK_FORCE_SOFTWARE=1 to force the software path even when EGL is available — useful for headless test runs and for diagnosing driver-specific bugs.

For development inside this repository:

export LTK_THEMES_DIR="$PWD/themes"
cargo run --example showcase

Examples

Useful entry points in this repository:

• cargo run --example showcase
• cargo run --example responsive
• cargo run --example widgets
• cargo run --example inputs
• cargo run --example scroll
• cargo run --example combo
• cargo run --example dialog
• cargo run --example sliders
• cargo run --example pickers
• cargo run --example mini_shell

In general:

• start with showcase for a regular app window
• use responsive to see the fluid vs physical modes on stock widgets
• use widgets to see the core controls
• use mini_shell if you need overlays, theme switching, or shell-style composition

Public API Overview

Most applications should start with this subset:

• App
• Element<Msg>
• widgets such as button, text, text_edit, image
• layouts such as column, row, stack, grid, spacer
• Color
• run

More advanced APIs are available when needed:

• overlays()
• shell_mode() and layer-shell controls
• set_channel_sender() and poll_external()
• gesture hooks such as on_swipe_*
• core::UiSurface
• runtime theme APIs

Responsive Design

ltk offers two first-class ways to make an interface adapt to the display, chosen per value or per process:

• Fluid — sizes are a fraction of the surface, tracking the short side (width in portrait, height in landscape). Best for full-screen system surfaces. Written with Length::vmin / orient / fluid and bounded with .clamp.
• Physical — sizes stay a constant real-world size across displays (the mainstream HiDPI dp model). Best for conventional windowed apps. Written with Length::dp plus set_density.

Stock widgets follow the process-wide mode (set_widget_scaling, fluid by default); an explicit Length on a widget always overrides it. The full mechanics live in docs/architecture.md, a walkthrough in docs/onboarding.md, and the per-item reference in the Length / WidgetScaling rustdoc.

Windows and Shell Surfaces

By default, ltk creates a regular xdg-shell window.

That is the right starting point for:

• normal applications
• internal tools
• prototypes

Switch to layer-shell only when you are building shell surfaces such as:

• top bars
• docks
• homescreens
• notifications
• greeters
• lock screens

For a screen locker, use ShellMode::SessionLock instead of layer-shell: it presents an ext-session-lock-v1 surface that the compositor keeps on top of everything until the app returns true from requested_exit(), which makes the runtime call unlock and lift the lock.

Performance Notes

ltk is designed to sleep when idle and redraw only on real work.

The main rules for downstream applications are:

• keep view() pure and cheap
• do not perform I/O inside view()
• use poll_interval() sparingly
• return true from is_animating() only while something is actually moving
• cache decoded images and expensive derived state in your app

The library already provides:

• event-driven redraw scheduling
• per-surface invalidation
• partial redraws for interaction-only changes
• GPU and software backends behind the same widget API

Backend Differences

The public API is the same across backends, but visual parity is not perfect yet. The widget tree, layout, hit-testing, text, images, fills, strokes and clipping all paint identically on both paths. The gaps are in gradients and the shadow / backdrop pipeline.

Effects that currently render only on the GLES backend, and degrade on the Software backend:

• Gradients (linear and radial, via Canvas::fill_paint_rect) — rendered with dedicated shaders on GLES; on software they collapse to a flat fill from the first stop (tiny-skia can render gradients natively, but that is not wired up yet).
• Outer drop shadows (Canvas::fill_shadow_outer) — themed surfaces that declare a Shadow slot show the soft halo on GLES and a flat fill on software.
• Inner / inset shadows (Canvas::fill_shadow_inset) — InsetShadow slots paint nothing on software.
• Inset shadow blend modes — PlusLighter, Multiply, Screen and Overlay are GLES-only; the GLES Overlay path snapshots the framebuffer and computes the CSS Overlay formula in-shader, which has no software equivalent today.

Calls to these APIs are safe on both backends — they simply produce a flatter appearance under software. No widget panics, returns an error, or skips unrelated drawing.

If your application leans heavily on shadows or inset effects, validate both rendering paths before shipping. Force the software path with:

LTK_FORCE_SOFTWARE=1 cargo run --example showcase

Closing this gap (porting the shadow / inset-shadow pipeline to tiny-skia) is on the post-v0.1 roadmap.

Documentation

File	When to read it
docs/onboarding.md	First hour with the library — environment, first app, what to ignore at first.
docs/architecture.md	Runtime model, overlays, animation, theming, performance and where the cost of a frame lives.
docs/widgets.md	Per-widget catalogue: what each one is, when to use it, minimal example, see-also.
docs/theming.md	JSON theme schema, slot conventions, runtime APIs.
docs/cookbook.md	Concrete recipes — slide-in panels, password fields, runtime theme toggle, channel-driven state, embedding without ltk::run.
cargo doc --open	Per-item rustdoc for the public API.
SECURITY.md	How to report a vulnerability and what is in / out of scope.
CONTRIBUTING.md	Build, test, code style, patch shape.

Recommended reading order for a new contributor:

1. run examples/showcase.rs
2. read docs/onboarding.md
3. browse docs/widgets.md for the catalogue
4. dip into docs/cookbook.md when you hit a specific shape
5. open docs/architecture.md once you need overlays, animations, or runtime theming.

Relationship to Liberux and Eydos

Liberux is the promoter and primary maintainer of ltk.

The project exists because Eydos needs a native Wayland toolkit for its own shell and application stack, but ltk is intentionally published as a public library rather than kept as a private internal component. Third-party developers are part of the intended audience.

That origin matters because it explains the current priorities:

• strong Wayland focus
• support for layer-shell and shell-style overlays
• attention to mobile power usage
• theming and runtime surfaces that fit an operating system environment

License

This project is licensed under LGPL-2.1-only.

That means third parties can use ltk in their own applications, including proprietary ones, subject to the obligations of the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1. If you are planning a commercial or closed-source product, read the license text carefully and make sure your distribution model complies with it.

See LICENSE.

Third-party assets

ltk's default theme bundles two third-party asset sets that travel under their own licences. Anyone redistributing the toolkit (or a binary that embeds the default theme) must propagate the attributions below.

• Symbolic icons under themes/default/icons/catalogue/ come from Streamline's Core Line Free set, distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). © Streamline. Some files have been modified for the symbolic-tinting pipeline; details in themes/default/icons/catalogue/LICENSE.md. Upstream: https://www.streamlinehq.com/icons/core-line-free.
• Sora Regular (src/theme/fallback/Sora-Regular.otf) is the embedded font fallback, distributed under SIL Open Font Licence 1.1. © 2019-2020 The Sora Project Authors, Jonathan Barnbrook, Julián Moncada. Upstream: https://github.com/sora-xor/sora-font.

The remaining artwork in the default theme — wallpapers, lockscreens, launcher logo, brand-mark variants and per-application icons — is original to Liberux Labs and travels under the toolkit's own LGPL-2.1-only licence.

The full Debian-style declaration of every asset and its licence lives in debian/copyright; that is the file the .deb ships under /usr/share/doc/libltk*/copyright.

Contributing

Patches and bug reports are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md for the practical mechanics: build prerequisites, how to run tests, the project's Modified Allman code style, and what shape a pull request should take.

For security-sensitive issues see SECURITY.md — please do not file those through the public issue tracker.

If you are evaluating ltk for a third-party product and are unsure whether your use case is in scope, open a discussion before writing code. That is especially useful when you are:

• missing an app-facing example,
• blocked by a shell-oriented assumption in the API,
• trying to understand whether a given platform target is realistic.