LWXGL: A Lightweight X11 Graphics Library for Linux

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/DREssedAlarm184/LWXGL/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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Design philosophy

• Palette-indexed 16-color rendering. Every color in LWXGL is an index into a 16-entry palette. The default palette ships with classic CGA-style colors, but every entry can be queried and replaced at runtime with GPaletteModify. This keeps color management explicit and the internal pixel format as a single byte per pixel.
• Integer element IDs. Every on-screen element — text labels, buttons, input fields, consoles, image canvases — is created with a caller-chosen integer ID. That same ID is used to update, move, hide, or delete the element later. There is no heap-allocated handle to track; the library manages the storage.
• Callback-based events. Input handling follows a registration model: you call GEventAttachKey, GEventAttachClick, or GEventAttachDelete once to register a function pointer, and LWXGL invokes it on the appropriate X11 event. Button elements take their onclick callback directly at creation time.

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Key features

• Window creation and double-buffered rendering via Xlib — frames are drawn to an off-screen Pixmap (back buffer) and blitted to the window each tick, eliminating flicker.
• 16-color indexed palette with runtime modification — query any palette entry with GPaletteQuery, replace it with GPaletteModify, or restore all defaults with GPaletteReset.
• Built-in UI elements: text labels, push buttons with three visual states (unpressed / hover / pressed), single-line text input fields, checkboxes, solid rectangles, scrollable consoles, and writable image canvases.
• Primitive drawing into image canvases: filled/outlined rectangles (GPrimitiveRect), circles (GPrimitiveCircle), lines (GPrimitiveLine), and RLE-encoded monochrome sprites (GPrimitiveSprite).
• Keyboard and mouse event callbacks — raw key codes, click coordinates and button number, and a persistent pressed-key array queryable with GQueryKeyboard / GQueryKeyDown.
• Fixed-frame-rate game loop (GSimpleWindowLoop) — handles events, renders, invokes a per-frame callback, and sleeps the remainder of each frame to hit the requested FPS target.
• TGA indexed-color image loading — load 8-bit paletted TGA files with GAllocateTGA / GCreateTGAImage, optionally importing the image’s palette into the active 16-color palette.
• Screen/layer system — assign elements to numbered screens with GScreenApply and switch the active screen with GScreenActive, enabling simple multi-page UIs.
• Modal dialogs — spawn confirmation or informational modal overlays with GSpawnModal and a confirm callback.
• Region capture — read back a rectangular area of the current back buffer as a paletted TGA byte array with GCaptureRegion.

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Language compatibility