This Month in Linebender, September 2024

content/blog/2024-10-15-tmil-09/index.md

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+title = "This Month in Linebender, September 2024"
+authors = ["Daniel McNab", "Olivier Faure"]
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+
+Linebender is an informal open-source organization working on various projects to advance the state of the art in GUI for [the Rust programming language](https://rust-lang.org).
+
+<img style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto" src="../../linebender.svg" alt="Linebender logo; smoothly stroked overlapping lowercase letters, an l and a b." height="200" width = "200">
+
+## Xilem
+
+Xilem is our flagship GUI project, inspired by SwiftUI.
+It lets you build user interfaces declaratively by composing lightweight views together, and will diff them to provide minimal updates to a retained layer.
+
+- HTTP cats example ([xilem#571][]).
+- `lens`, a shorthand for a common component pattern ([xilem#587][]).
+- We added Views for some existing and new widgets:
+  - Grid layout ([xilem#570][]).
+  - Images ([xilem#571][]).
+
+<!-- TODO: Xilem Web seems to not have any especially relevant updates? -->
+
+<figure>
+
+<img style="height: auto" src="http-cats.png" alt="A list of HTTP status codes, with 'Select' buttons. HTTP code 418 'I'm a teapot' is selected, with a picture of a kitten hiding in a teapot. height="962" width = "600">
+
+<figcaption>
+
+The HTTP cats example.
+
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+## Masonry
+
+Masonry is the widget system used by Xilem.
+It provides a non-opinionated retained widget tree, designed as a base layer for high-level GUI frameworks.
+
+Our ongoing pass specification project has been largely implemented.
+That work is now in a wrapping-up stage, which has allowed Olivier to work on improving the codebase's quality in general.
+Some highlights of work from September:
+
+- [xilem#515][]: Removes unimplemented functionality from our text handling code.
+- [xilem#570][]: An implementation of a grid layout, by Jared O'Connell.
+- [xilem#550][]: Restores scroll requests, as used by text inputs.
+- [xilem#565][]: Allows widgets to implement more efficient pointer position dispatching, by new Linebender member Tom Churchman.
+- [xilem#580][]: Adds screen reader support for the textbox widget.
+
+<!-- No grid example, it's not really visual. -->
+
+Some ongoing work includes:
+
+- [xilem#615][]: Detailed accessibility information for text input and prose widgets.
+- [xilem#606][]: Custom client side decorations for Wayland, by Marco Melorio.
+- [xilem#605][]: Greater flexibility in the layout of the `Image` widget, by failingprovince.
+- [xilem#591][]: An SVG-like widget for absolute positioning, by Muhammad Ragib Hasin.
+
+
+## Vello
+
+Vello is our GPU vector renderer.
+It can draw large 2D scenes with high performance, using GPU compute shaders for most of the work.
+
+The month of september included a lot of progress towards the 0.3.0 release.
+
+- We no longer consider Vello to be experimental ([vello#691][]). Please note that Vello is still an alpha, and has several known issues.
+- An implementation of the single pass scan described last month is being created by Thomas Smith in [vello#685][].
+
+
+## Parley
+
+Parley is a text layout library.
+It handles text layout, mostly at the level of line breaking and resolving glyph positions.
+
+- Nico Burns contributed a new way to assign layout properties in [parley#76][].
+
+
+## Others
+
+- Daniel and Olivier's "office hours" appointments can still be booked by anyone for open-ended discussion of the ecosystem.
+  - [See Daniel's schedule here](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/appointments/schedules/AcZssZ32eQYJ9DtZ_wJaYNtT36YioETiloZDIdImFpBFRo5-XsqGzpikgkg47LPsiHhpiwiQ1orOwwW2).
+  - [See Olivier's schedule here](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/appointments/schedules/AcZssZ2t767ZRETD_TkRI_VxK2ZTG0VrO9OZ4l7HvTxefhtJcg85iK0ZN7zWNnAEZtH0Dn7C1GKxrmYM).
+
+[xilem#515]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/515
+[xilem#550]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/550
+[xilem#565]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/565
+[xilem#570]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/570
+[xilem#571]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/571
+[xilem#580]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/580
+[xilem#587]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/587
+[xilem#591]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/591
+[xilem#605]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/605
+[xilem#606]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/606
+[xilem#615]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/615
+[vello#685]: https://github.com/linebender/vello/pull/685
+[vello#691]: https://github.com/linebender/vello/pull/691
+[parley#76]: https://github.com/linebender/parley/pull/76