Rxi's Microui Port to Idiomatic Rust

This project started as a C2Rust conversion of Rxi's MicroUI and has since grown into a Rust-first UI toolkit. It keeps Microui's compact rendering model while moving UI authoring onto retained WidgetTree values, stateful widget structs with pointer-derived identity, and backend-agnostic rendering hooks.

Compared to microui-rs, this crate embraces std types, reusable retained trees, and richer widgets such as custom rendering callbacks, dialogs, and a file dialog.

Demo

Clone and build the demo (enable exactly one backend feature):

$ cargo run --example demo-full --features example-vulkan   # Vulkan backend
# or
$ cargo run --example demo-full --features example-glow     # Glow backend
# or
$ cargo run --example demo-full --features example-wgpu     # WGPU backend

example-backend is only a shared gate for example code paths; it is not runnable by itself. Running with only --features example-backend will fail intentionally at compile time.

demo-full now loads examples/FACEPALM.png and assets/suzane.obj from disk at runtime (no include_bytes! for those files).

For a smaller release executable, use nightly + rebuilt std:

RUSTFLAGS="-C strip=symbols -C link-arg=-s -Zlocation-detail=none -Zfmt-debug=none" \
cargo +nightly build \
  --release \
  -Z build-std=std,panic_abort \
  -Z build-std-features=optimize_for_size \
  --example demo-full \
  --no-default-features \
  --features "example-wgpu png_source"

Replace example-wgpu with example-glow or example-vulkan if needed.

Key Concepts

• Context: owns the renderer handle, user input, frame results, and root windows. Each frame starts by feeding input into the context, then calling context.window(...), context.dialog(...), or context.popup(...) with retained trees for every visible surface.
• Container: the internal execution object behind windows, panels, popups, and retained tree nodes. Application code should normally work through Context, WindowHandle, ContainerHandle, and WidgetTreeBuilder instead of authoring widgets directly on a container.
• Layout engine + flows: the engine tracks scope stack, scroll-adjusted coordinates, and content extents, while flows control placement behavior. WidgetTreeBuilder exposes retained row/grid/column/stack structure, and widget layout uses each widget's measure result so SizePolicy::Auto can follow per-widget intrinsic sizing.
• Widget: stateful UI element implementing the Widget trait (for example Button, Textbox, Slider). These structs hold interaction state and use pointer-derived IDs from their current address.
• WidgetTree: retained widget/layout hierarchy built once with WidgetTreeBuilder and replayed each frame through Context::window(...), Context::dialog(...), or Context::popup(...). Tree nodes cover widgets, panels, headers/tree nodes, row/grid/column/stack layout groups, and custom rendering, so UI structure stays representable as retained data instead of traversal-time callbacks.
• Graphics: widget-local primitive drawing exposed through WidgetCtx::graphics(...) and the Graphics builder. It covers rectangles, frames, text/icons/images, thick line strokes, filled polygons, and nested local clip scopes.
• Typography: atlases can now bake multiple named fonts and sizes. Style resolves semantic roles (body, small, title, heading, mono) through FontRole, while individual text-bearing widgets can override their own font: FontChoice.
• Renderer: any backend that implements the Renderer trait can be used. The included SDL2 + glow example demonstrates how to batch the commands produced by a container and upload them to the GPU.

let name = widget_handle(Textbox::new(""));
let tree = WidgetTreeBuilder::build({
    let name = name.clone();
    move |tree| {
        tree.row(&[SizePolicy::Fixed(120), SizePolicy::Remainder(0)], SizePolicy::Auto, |tree| {
            tree.text("Name");
            tree.widget(name.clone());
        });
    }
});

ctx.window(&mut main_window, ContainerOption::NONE, WidgetBehaviourOption::NONE, &tree);

if ctx.committed_results().state_of_handle(&name).is_submitted() {
    // react to the textbox submission here
}

Retained trees are the supported public authoring path. Post-render business logic lives alongside the window call and reads from ctx.committed_results(), which intentionally exposes the previous frame's published interaction generation:

ctx.window(&mut main_window, ContainerOption::NONE, WidgetBehaviourOption::NONE, &tree);

let results = ctx.committed_results();
if results.state_of_handle(&submit_button).is_submitted() {
    save_form();
}

Widget IDs

Widget IDs default to the address of the widget state. This is stable as long as the state stays at a fixed address, but it can change if the state lives inside a Vec that grows/shrinks (reallocation moves items). If that happens, focus/hover continuity follows the new addresses.

When setting focus manually, pass a widget pointer ID from widget_id_of or widget_id_of_handle:

my_window.set_focus(Some(widget_id_of_handle(&my_textbox_handle)));

Window, dialog, and popup builders now accept a WidgetBehaviourOption to control scroll behavior. Use WidgetBehaviourOption::NO_SCROLL for popups that should not scroll, WidgetBehaviourOption::GRAB_SCROLL for widgets that want to consume scroll, and WidgetBehaviourOption::NONE for default behavior. Custom widgets receive consumed scroll in CustomRenderArgs::scroll_delta.

Preferred sizing and retained layout

• Every built-in widget reports its own intrinsic preferred size from content metrics (text/icon/thumb/line layout).
• Retained traversal measures committed widget state, allocates the widget rectangle, then calls Widget::run to sample interaction and update widget-local state.
• WidgetTreeBuilder exposes retained row, grid, column, stack, header, tree_node, container, and custom_render structure so layout stays declarative instead of closure-driven.
• SizePolicy::Weight(value) distributes available track space by sibling weight ratio (spacing accounted for). In single-track flows, it uses a 0..=100 scale.
• Returning <= 0 for either axis from Widget::measure still means "use layout fallback/defaults" for that axis.

Images and textures

Some widgets can render an Image, which can reference either a slot or an uploaded texture at runtime:

let texture = ctx.load_image_from(ImageSource::Png { bytes: include_bytes!("assets/IMAGE.png") })?;
let image_button = widget_handle(Button::with_image(
    "External Image",
    Some(Image::Texture(texture)),
    WidgetOption::NONE,
    WidgetFillOption::ALL,
));
let tree = WidgetTreeBuilder::build({
    let image_button = image_button.clone();
    move |tree| tree.widget(image_button.clone())
});

ctx.window(&mut image_window, ContainerOption::NONE, WidgetBehaviourOption::NONE, &tree);
if ctx.committed_results().state_of_handle(&image_button).is_submitted() {
    // react here
}

• Image::Slot renders an entry from the atlas and benefits from batching.
• Image::Texture targets renderer-owned textures (the backend handles binding when drawing).
• WidgetFillOption controls which interaction states draw a filled background; use WidgetFillOption::ALL to keep the default normal/hover/click fills.
• Use Context::load_image_rgba/load_image_from and Context::free_image to manage the lifetime of external textures.

Graphics primitives

• WidgetCtx::graphics(...) exposes a widget-local Graphics builder for custom widgets and paint code.
• The builder provides draw_rect, draw_box, draw_text, draw_icon, draw_image, draw_frame, draw_widget_frame, draw_control_text, stroke_line, fill_polygon, and local clip helpers such as with_clip.
• Filled shapes and strokes are tessellated into retained triangles and clipped in software before replay, so primitive rendering stays consistent across glow, Vulkan, and WGPU backends.
• examples/demo-full includes a dedicated graphics window that exercises the primitive API.

Fonts and typography

• Atlas building supports multiple baked fonts and sizes through builder::FontAsset, and the same config can drive both runtime atlas construction and offline/prebuilt atlas export.
• Context::new(...) binds the conventional atlas keys body, small, title, heading, and mono onto the default Style. Context::set_style(...) also rebinds any font fields that are still left at their default/unset values, so tweaking colors or spacing on top of Style::default() keeps the intended body/title sizes.
• Text-bearing widgets expose font: FontChoice, so you can either select a semantic role (FontRole::Heading.into()) or a concrete baked font ID (atlas.font_id("caption").unwrap().into()).
• Font sizes are selected by choosing another baked font variant, not by scaling one bitmap font at runtime.
• examples/demo-full uses this directly: NORMAL.ttf for control/body text, BOLD.ttf for window titles, and CONSOLE.ttf for the log window’s input/output text.

use microui_redux::{builder, FontRole, TextBlock};

const FONTS: &[builder::FontAsset<'static>] = &[
    builder::FontAsset {
        name: "body",
        path: "assets/NORMAL.ttf",
        size: 12,
    },
    builder::FontAsset {
        name: "small",
        path: "assets/NORMAL.ttf",
        size: 10,
    },
    builder::FontAsset {
        name: "title",
        path: "assets/BOLD.ttf",
        size: 16,
    },
    builder::FontAsset {
        name: "heading",
        path: "assets/NORMAL.ttf",
        size: 18,
    },
    builder::FontAsset {
        name: "mono",
        path: "assets/CONSOLE.ttf",
        size: 12,
    },
];

let config = builder::Config {
    texture_width: 512,
    texture_height: 256,
    white_icon: "assets/WHITE.png".into(),
    close_icon: "assets/CLOSE.png".into(),
    expand_icon: "assets/PLUS.png".into(),
    collapse_icon: "assets/MINUS.png".into(),
    check_icon: "assets/CHECK.png".into(),
    expand_down_icon: "assets/EXPAND_DOWN.png".into(),
    open_folder_16_icon: "assets/OPEN_FOLDER_16.png".into(),
    closed_folder_16_icon: "assets/CLOSED_FOLDER_16.png".into(),
    file_16_icon: "assets/FILE_16.png".into(),
    default_font: "assets/NORMAL.ttf".into(),
    default_font_size: 12,
    fonts: FONTS,
    slots: &[],
};

let mut title = TextBlock::new("Inspector");
title.font = FontRole::Heading.into();

If fonts is empty, builder::Config falls back to default_font + default_font_size for the old single-font atlas layout.

Cargo features

• builder (default) – enables the runtime atlas builder and PNG decoding helpers used by the examples.
• png_source – allows serialized atlases and ImageSource::Png { .. } uploads to stay compressed.
• save-to-rust – enables AtlasHandle::to_rust_files to emit the current atlas as Rust code for embedding.
• example-backend – shared internal gate used by examples; pair it with exactly one concrete backend.
• example-glow / example-vulkan / example-wgpu – concrete example backends; choose exactly one when running examples.

Disabling default features leaves only the raw RGBA upload path (ImageSource::Raw { .. }): cargo build --no-default-features

The demos require builder, so run them with --no-default-features plus builder: cargo run --example demo-full --no-default-features --features "example-vulkan builder"

Equivalent command using the shared gate explicitly: cargo run --example demo-full --no-default-features --features "example-backend example-vulkan builder"

To export an atlas as Rust, enable save-to-rust (optionally png_source for PNG bytes) and call AtlasHandle::to_rust_files, or use the helper binary: cargo run --bin atlas_export --features "builder save-to-rust" -- --output path/to/atlas.rs

Text rendering and layout

• Retained text widgets automatically center the font’s baseline inside each cell, and every line gets a small vertical pad so glyphs never touch the widget borders.
• TextBlock supports wrapped multi-line content while preserving outer padding without adding extra spacing between lines.
• Custom rendering still goes through retained custom_render nodes, which receive layout, input, and clip information through CustomRenderArgs.

Version 0.6

Version 0.6.0 is the retained-tree release. Compared to 0.5.0, it replaces the public immediate/closure authoring path with retained widget trees and committed interaction results.

• Replaced the v0.5 public immediate/closure authoring path with retained widget trees.
  • Context::window, dialog, and popup now take &WidgetTree instead of UI-building closures.
  • WidgetTree nodes cover widgets, embedded containers, headers/tree nodes, row/grid/column/stack groups, and custom render leaves.
  • The public immediate widget-helper surface and tree.run(...) escape hatch are gone from the supported API.
• Added a retained composition API with stable node identity and a smaller builder surface.
  • WidgetTree / WidgetTreeBuilder provide reusable retained widget/layout hierarchies with stable NodeIds.
  • WidgetTreeBuilder is centered on one NodeOptions value that carries optional keys and optional placement metadata.
  • The old keyed_* / *_with_policy builder matrix was collapsed into one default insertion method plus one *_with(NodeOptions, ...) overload per structural concept.
• Reworked retained execution around explicit layout and interaction generations.
  • Retained traversal now runs a layout pass and a Widget::run pass, reusing cached geometry instead of advancing layout while rendering.
  • WidgetTreeCache stores layout and interaction separately across previous/current generations.
  • The temporary runtime adapter tree was removed; retained traversal now walks WidgetTreeNode values directly.
• Tightened the widget/runtime contract compared to v0.5.
  • Widgets now implement measure + run; the intermediate reconcile / frame-commit design was removed.
  • Persistent widget state stays inside the widget handle and mutates during run.
  • Pointer-derived widget IDs remain the source of focus, hover, and result lookup, with widget_id_of and widget_id_of_handle as the public helpers.
• Added widget-local graphics primitives as a first-class paint path.
  • WidgetCtx::graphics(...) and Graphics expose rectangles, frames, text/icons/images, thick line strokes, polygon fills, and nested local clip scopes.
  • Primitives are tessellated into retained triangles and software-clipped before replay, keeping backend behavior consistent without fragmenting batches on clip changes.
• Added multi-font atlas support with semantic typography roles.
  • Runtime atlas building and offline/prebuilt atlas export now share the same multi-font config surface.
  • Style binds semantic roles (body, small, title, heading, mono) from atlas font names, and text-bearing widgets can override their font per instance through FontChoice.
  • Different text sizes are represented as separate baked font variants instead of runtime bitmap scaling.
• Made committed retained results the strict public business-logic contract.
  • Per-frame widget results are recorded internally by widget ID and published as the previous frame's committed generation.
  • Context::committed_results() is the public app-facing results API, including FrameResultGeneration::state_of_handle.
  • Current-frame results stay internal; FrameResults and current_results() are no longer part of the public surface.
• Migrated shipped UI and supporting widgets to the retained-only model.
  • examples/simple, examples/calculator, examples/demo-full, and FileDialogState now build retained trees and react through committed results.
  • Retained display widgets such as TextBlock replaced callback-only display glue.
  • Demo/file-dialog lists now reuse persistent ListItem state instead of rebuilding transient labels every frame.
• Hardened retained interaction, layout, and renderer integration.
  • Mouse input delivered to widgets and custom render callbacks is localized to the widget rectangle.
  • Root windows and nested panels now share the retained scrollbar/clip/resize ordering needed for correct scrolling and bottom-right resize behavior.
  • Weight-based sizing, directional stacks, wrapped text blocks, retained custom rendering, and the glow/vulkan/wgpu example backends were all kept aligned with the retained execution path.

Version 0.5

• Widget identity moved fully to pointer-based IDs.
  • Removed with_id; focus/hover now use widget trait-object/state pointers.
• Layout refactor: introduced LayoutEngine + specialized flows (RowFlow, StackFlow) instead of a one-size-fits-all manager.
  • Preferred sizing pipeline: widget helpers now call Widget::measure, allocate rectangles, then run widgets directly against the current frame input.
  • Directional stack support: StackDirection::{TopToBottom, BottomToTop} plus stack_direction and stack_with_width_direction.
• Context/container API cleanup: Context module split, input forwarding helpers, container state encapsulation, and handle views.
• Widget internals cleanup: helper macroization/simplification, node/widget scaffolding unification, and text widget module split.
• Text and input fixes: shared text layout/edit paths, textbox delete/end fixes, centralized widget input fallback.
• Scrollbar behavior cleanup: unified sizing, layout, and drag handling.
• File dialog and atlas fixes, including file dialog layout redesign and footer/button spacing corrections.
• Added WGPU example backend and migrated demo-full to new layout flow APIs.
• Added directional stack demo window and expanded documentation/comments for layout and WGPU renderer.

Version 0.4

• Stateful widgets
  • Stateful widgets for core controls (button, list item, checkbox, textbox, slider, number, custom).
  • Pointer-based widget IDs; InputSnapshot threaded through widgets and cached per frame.
  • IdManager removed; widget IDs now derive from state pointers.
  • Widget API redesign requires stateful widget instances; trait/type renames applied.
  • Legacy button_ex* shims removed.
  • DrawCtx extracted into its own module and shared via WidgetCtx.
  • WidgetState/WidgetCtx pipeline with ControlState returned from update_control.
• File dialog UX fixes (close on OK/cancel, path-aware browsing).
• Expanded unit tests for scrollbars, sliders, and PNG decoding paths.
• Style shared via Rc<Style> across containers/panels; window chrome state moved into Window.
• Container::style now uses Rc<Style>.

Version 0.3

• Use std (Vec, parse, ...)
• Containers contain clip stack and command list
• Move begin_*, end_* functions to closures
• Move to AtlasRenderer Trait
• Remove/Refactor Pool
• Change layout code
• Treenode as tree
• Manage windows lifetime & ownership outside of context (use root windows)
• Manage containers lifetime & ownership outside of contaienrs
• Software based textured rectangle clipping
• Add Atlasser to the code
  • Runtime atlasser
    • Icon
    • Font (Hash Table)
  • Separate Atlas Builder from the Atlas
  • Builder feature
  • Save Atlas to rust
  • Atlas loader from const rust
• Image widget
• Png Atlas source
• Pass-Through rendering command (for 3D viewports)
• Custom Rendering widget
  • Mouse input event
  • Keyboard event
  • Text event
  • Drag outside of the region
  • Rendering
• Dialog support
• File dialog
• API/Examples loop/iterations
  • Simple example
  • Full api use example (3d/dialog/..)
• Documentation