Slim, flexible GUIs for the embedded area with Slint 1.2

The Slint UI framework has been released in version 1.2 and offers some innovations for the development of embedded systems. In particular, it expands the API, which now enables direct integration of the Slint UI as a plug-in into your own applications. Developers can use this abstraction layer to design window-based, graphical interfaces to create their own backend with a GUI, which is particularly interesting in the embedded area due to Slint’s small size of 300 KB. The Slint developers have further strengthened this by linking it to the Espressif-IoT Development Framework (IDF). It provides an SDK for controlling SSP32 series MCU processors with C/C. Slint is easy to use

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idf.py add-dependency slint/slint

incorporate.

Example of an interface designed with Slint and Expressif in the IoT area.

(Image: Slint)

Also relevant for the IoT area is the support of Linux KMS backends (Kernel Mode Setting), i.e. a direct graphical interface anchored in the Linux kernel that accesses the graphics directly via OpenGL or Vulkan. Slint also reads user input from the touchscreen or other input devices.

There are also small changes such as ReverseModel (Rust/C++) to show models in reverse order, or edited callbacks to the SpinBox.

The update to version 1.2 is backwards compatible. Rust users use the cargo update command. With CMake, integration is done via FetchContent and changing the GIT_TAG entry in the CMakeLists.txt file to v1.2.0 or release/1.2.

Flexible development with live preview

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The toolkit from Berlin, which was released in stable version 1.0 in April, promises rapid development of complete graphical interfaces with a direct preview during coding. This also works as a plugin for Visual Studio Code. Programmers can use C++, JS or Rust, with the tool created in Rust translating the finished code into machine language. It offers the user full access to the operating system’s APIs.

The toolkit shows a live preview as you develop.

(Image: Slint)

A free version is available for Windows and web applications; companies that want to use the embedded functions pay from 59 euros per month and user. Further information can be found in the blog post or in the GitHub directory.

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