About

tekUI is a small, freestanding and portable graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit written in Lua and C. It was developed initially for the X Window System and can serve as a general-purpose GUI library for desktop applications.

Its main focus is on rapid development of applications for custom-made devices, often with a custom appearance and under resource-constrained conditions, such as for embedded devices with a display controller.

Being mostly written in the Lua scripting language, it is easily extensible with new user interface elements, which can be rewritten in C later. The creation of new styles and themes and fitting the software to a new device are equally simple. See overview for a more detailed technical description.

License

TekUI is free software under the same license as Lua itself: It can be used for both academic and commercial purposes at no cost, it qualifies as Open Source software, and its license is compatible with the GPL. Note: The commercially supported version contains additional components which may be licensed differently. See License.

Status, requirements

TekUI is in early stage of development. It is available for the Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD platforms. Display drivers are available for X11, Windows, DirectFB, and Nano-X. See also TODO for a list of known bugs and missing features, and the installation section for a list of the required packages.

Development model

If you find this software useful, you have probably arranged to fit it to a certain device or application – submit your additions and we will check them for inclusion to the public source code repository. Regular developers are welcome also.

Support and services

Vendors of commercial products can help advance the development by assigning projects based on tekUI, or license our commercially supported version. Support and services for the integration of tekUI as well as special versions, new display drivers, custom classes etc. are available from the authors – see below.

Authors and contact

Authors:

  • Timm S. Müller <tmueller at schulze-mueller.de>
  • Franciska Schulze <fschulze at schulze-mueller.de>

Open source project website:

Public mailing list:

Commercial product website: