An experimental layout manager and formspec API replacement for Minetest. Vaguely inspired by Flutter and GTK.
Features
Layouting
- No manual positioning of elements.
- Automatic layouting using
HBoxandVBoxcontainers - Some elements have an automatic size.
- The size of elements can optionally expand to fit larger spaces
Other features
- No form names. Form names are still used internally, however they are hidden from the API.
- No having to worry about state.
- Values of fields, scrollbars, checkboxes, etc are remembered when redrawing a form and are automatically applied.
- Has an inspector mod to help with developing and debugging forms.
Limitations
- This mod doesn't support all of the features that regular formspecs do.
- FS51 is required if you want to have full support for Minetest 5.3 and below.
Basic example
See example.lua for a more comprehensive example which demonstrates how
layouting and alignment works.
-- GUI elements are accessible with flow.widgets. Using
-- `local gui = flow.widgets` is recommended to reduce typing.
local gui = flow.widgets
-- GUIs are created with flow.make_gui(build_func).
local my_gui = flow.make_gui(function(player, ctx)
-- The build function should return a GUI element such as gui.VBox.
-- `ctx` can be used to store context. `ctx.form` is reserved for storing
-- the state of elements in the form. For example, you can use
-- `ctx.form.my_checkbox` to check whether `my_checkbox` is checked. Note
-- that ctx.form.element may be nil instead of its default value.
-- This function may be called at any time by flow.
-- gui.VBox is a "container element" added by this mod.
return gui.VBox {
gui.Label {label = "Here is a dropdown:"},
gui.Dropdown {
-- The value of this dropdown will be accessible from ctx.form.my_dropdown
name = "my_dropdown",
items = {'First item', 'Second item', 'Third item'},
index_event = true,
},
gui.Button {
label = "Get dropdown index",
on_event = function(player, ctx)
-- flow should guarantee that `ctx.form.my_dropdown` exists, even if the client doesn't send my_dropdown to the server.
local selected_idx = ctx.form.my_dropdown
minetest.chat_send_player(player:get_player_name(), "You have selected item #" .. selected_idx .. "!")
end,
}
}
end)
-- Show the GUI to player as an interactive form
-- Note that `player` is a player object and not a player name.
my_gui:show(player)
-- Close the form
my_gui:close(player)
-- Alternatively, the GUI can be shown as a non-interactive HUD (requires
-- hud_fs to be installed).
my_gui:show_hud(player)
my_gui:close_hud(player)
Other formspec libraries/utilities
These utilities likely aren't compatible with flow.
- fs_layout is another mod library that does automatic formspec element positioning.
- fslib is a small mod library that lets you build formspec strings.
- Just_Visiting's formspec editor is a Minetest (sub)game that lets you edit formspecs and preview them as you go
- kuto is a formspec library that has some extra widgets/components and has a callback API. Some automatic sizing can be done for buttons. It may be possible to use kuto's components with flow somehow as they both use formspec_ast internally.
- My web-based formspec editor lets you add elements and drag+drop them, however it doesn't support all formspec features.
Elements
See the README file on GitHub or GitLab for more documentation.
Seems very promising
Callbacks are soo handy, keep working on this 😃!
A wonderful stopgap
It sounds like eventually minetest itself is going to use forms and widgets that function a lot like this mod does, but in the meantime flow is what I'll be using.
Functions very well. It's everything I ever needed from a formspec api.