r/JavaProgramming • u/Opposite_Ad_3846 • 18d ago

A modern Java GUI toolkit for desktop, built from scratch

Gallery image

Gallery image

Hi everyone,

I’d like to introduce a new Java desktop toolkit, built from the ground up.

It includes dozens of components, accessibility support across three operating systems (Windows, macOS, and Linux), advanced language support, text direction, video, music, 3D, and charts.

The appearance is fully customizable (including dark themes), animations are native, and all the features you’d expect are there: printing, desktop integration, and testability.

I hope the community enjoys it. Although it is—admittedly—the product of AI, it was crafted with great care over the course of several months, ultimately saving tokens for anyone looking to build desktop applications.

https://limn-toolkit.github.io/limn-toolkit/

Enjoy

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19 comments sorted by

4

u/Prior-Equal2657 18d ago

The world never be the same again.... But why one more toolkit?

1

u/Opposite_Ad_3846 18d ago

I know :), this arrived a good few years late. But better late than never.
Java desktop has old and limited options, Swing didn't change or update for 2 decades, JavaFX is ugly and heavy, and SWT has limited customization.

1

u/Vijjwal_xD 18d ago

its literally what i expected from javafx when i got to know about it.I would love to try it out, once i get time.

i just took a quick sneakpeek into the documentation,so idk if its complete or not but what if i wanna implement some custom themes like modified version of google's material 3 or similar?

anyways, ill look into the documentation when im free this week.

1

u/Opposite_Ad_3846 18d ago

You can take a fast look using jbang to run demo and Theme-editor.
But, no, you will not be able to get perfect material theme, you can change: borders radius, colors, font and "elevations"

1

u/emberko 18d ago

Wow, that looks seriously impressive at first sight. But it's really a framework written by an LLM to be used by another LLM for writing client apps, with an API that's a weird mix of JavaFX and Compose. We are stepping into an era where if some code works no one cares how it looks inside.

1

u/Opposite_Ad_3846 18d ago

Honestly, this is my current reality.

I have 22 years of experience programming with Java desktop, but nowadays I rarely write the code myself.

I agree with you; the trend is for frameworks to be geared toward LLMs rather than humans.

1

u/Daggercombot 18d ago edited 18d ago

I really like how this looks and need a GUI toolkit of this style for some projects I am doing, are most of the modules pure java or do they all need at least some Native code,i only see natives for ffmpeg which i dont really need? If its pure java I can make a Solaris Port and PR It to you

1

u/Opposite_Ad_3846 17d ago

There is a native module for svg decoding (lunasvg), ffmpeg is optional and angle is not used in Linux.
But LWJGL doesn't have Solaris build (only FreeBSD) https://www.lwjgl.org/browse/release/3.4.3

1

u/Kadabrium 18d ago

markup support?

1

u/Opposite_Ad_3846 16d ago

Hi u/Kadabrium, what kind of support did you like? RTF, markdown, HTML?
Editor or Just Label support (rendering)?

1

u/a1b4fd 18d ago

Can you do GraalVM native builds with it?

1

u/Opposite_Ad_3846 16d ago

Version 1.0.1, already did it on localhost

1

u/maxandersen 17d ago

That looks cool. Thanks for moving Java on desktop forward ;)

Extra thanks for using Jbang - and you remind me I really need to add a way to handle OS specific flag handling so you don’t have to do that Mac specific first thread thing.

1

u/Opposite_Ad_3846 16d ago

Will be a nice addition for macOS users :)

1

u/ConfidenceUnique7377 18d ago

I’m using flatlaf but try

1

u/JudgeTall7532 16d ago

Hey ! this looks pretty cool. Infact I had also been working on my own scaffolder which takes backend code and then reverse engineers it to frontend... but work is in progress.