Cosmoe Development Active and Gaining Traction
A new GUI library called Cosmoe is gaining attention as it supports the development of programs on Linux with Wayland. This library allows programmers to create graphic interfaces using C++ and an API interface reminiscent of the BeOS operating system class. By utilizing the BeOS API, developers can run programs directly on Linux. The project’s code is distributed under the MIT license and can be found here.
Cosmoe provides a set of C++ classes that enable the rapid creation of user interfaces. It is simpler and more compact compared to toolkits like GTK and QT, yet it allows for the creation of modern-looking interfaces as opposed to using lightweight alternatives like FLTK and XForms. Cosmoe is capable of running efficiently on both older systems with low resource consumption and modern systems with optimal performance through the use of multi-threading. Various applications have been developed using Cosmoe to create interfaces, including emulators, terminal programs, styles, and simple games. A collection of these applications can be found here.
The library is built as a lightweight component without the need for server elements from the original Cosmoe Classic project. Cosmoe Classic, which saw a revival last year after a seventeen-year hiatus, was focused on porting the Haiku OS environment to work on Linux and utilized the interface drawing in a window created using the SDL library.
Currently, the project has shifted its focus from developing Haiku OS to creating a standalone library for graphic applications on Linux. In its current alpha stage, Cosmoe already supports about 95% of the capabilities of the BeOS API. Some limitations include the lack of support for BBITMAP types not tied to the screen for hardware acceleration and the API BFilePanel, which handles file opening and saving dialogs.
