Rust bindings for Sciter

Check this page for another language bindings (Delphi / D / Go / .NET / Python / Rust).

Introduction

Sciter is an embeddable multiplatform HTML/CSS/script engine with GPU accelerated rendering designed to render modern desktop application UI. It's a compact, single dll/dylib/so file (4-8 mb), engine without any additional dependencies.

Screenshots

Check screenshot gallery of the desktop UI examples and DirectX UI integration via Rust GFX.

Description

Physically Sciter is a mono library which contains:

• HTML and CSS rendering engine based on the H-SMILE core used in HTMLayout,
• JavaScript alike Scripting engine – core of TIScript which by itself is based on c-smile engine,
• Persistent Database (a.k.a. JSON DB) based on excellent DB products of Konstantin Knizhnik.
• Graphics module using excellent AGG library of Maxim Shemanarev at www.antigrain.com.
• Network communication module, it relies on Libcurl, the Great.

Internally it contains the following modules:

• CSS – CSS parser and collection of parsed CSS rules, etc.
• HTML DOM – HTML parser and DOM tree implementation.
• layout managers – collection of various layout managers – text layout, default block layout, flex layouts. Support of positioned floating elements is also here. This module does layout calculations heavy lifting. This module is also responsible for rendering of layouts.
• input behaviors – collection of built-in behaviors – code behind "active" DOM elements: <input>, <select>, <textarea>, etc.
• script module – source-to-bytecode compiler and virtual machine (VM) with compacting garbage collector (GC). This module also contains runtime implementation of standard classes and objects: Array, Object, Function and others.
• script DOM – runtime classes that expose DOM and DOM view (a.k.a. window) to the script.
• graphics abstraction layer – abstract graphics implementation that isolates modules above from particular platform details
  • Direct2D/DirectWrite graphics backend implementation (Windows);
  • GDI+ graphics backend implementation (Windows);
  • CoreGraphics backend implementation (Mac OS X);
  • Cairo backend implementation (GTK on all platforms including Linuxes);
  • Skia/OpenGL backend (all platforms)
• core primitives – set of common primitives: string, arrays, hash maps and so on.

Sciter supports all standard elements defined in HTML5 specification with some additions. CSS extended to better support Desktop UI development, e.g. flow and flex units, vertical and horizontal alignment, OS theming.

Sciter SDK comes with demo "browser" with builtin DOM inspector, script debugger and documentation browser:

Check http://sciter.com website and its documentation resources for engine principles, architecture and more.

Getting started:

1. Download Sciter SDK and extract it somewhere.
2. Add target platform binaries to PATH (bin, bin.osx or bin.gtk) and install Sciter shared library to your LIBRARY_PATH.
3. Build library and run the minimal sciter sample: cargo run --example minimal.
4. For your apps add the following dependency to the Cargo.toml: sciter-rs = "*".

Brief look:

Here is a minimal sciter app:

extern crate sciter;

fn main() {
    let mut frame = sciter::Window::new();
    frame.load_file("minimal.htm");
    frame.run_app();
}

It looks similar like this:

Interoperability

In respect of tiscript functions calling:

use sciter::{Element, Value};

let root = Element::from_window(hwnd);
let result: Value = root.call_function("namespace.name", &make_args!(1,"2",3));

Calling rust from script can be implemented as following:

struct Handler;

impl Handler {
  fn calc_sum(&self, a: i32, b: i32) -> i32 {
    a + b
  }
}

impl sciter::EventHandler for Handler {
  dispatch_script_call! {
    fn calc_sum(i32, i32);
  }
}

And we can access this function from script:

// `view` represents window where script is runnung.
// `stdout` stream is a standard output stream (shell or debugger console, for example)

stdout.printf("2 + 3 = %d\n", view.calc_sum(2, 3));

Check rust-sciter/examples folder for more complex usage.

Library documentation.

What supported right now:

• sciter::window which brings together window creation, host and event handlers
• sciter::host with basic event handling, needs to be redesigned
• sciter::event_handler with event handling and auto dispatching script calls to naive code
• sciter::dom for HTML DOM access and manipulation methods
• sciter::value Rust wrapper with sciter::script_error and sciter::native_function support
• sciter::behavior_factory - global factory for native behaviors
• sciter::graphics - platform independent graphics native interface (can be used in native behaviors)
• sciter::request - resource request object, used for custom resource downloading and handling
• sciter::video - custom video rendering
• sciter::archive - Sciter's compressed archive produced by sdk/bin/packfolder
• sciter::msg - Backend-independent input event processing

Platforms:

• Windows
• OSX
• Linux

License

Bindings library licensed under MIT license. Sciter Engine has the own license terms and end used license agreement for SDK usage.