Analysis of Embedded UI options for Linux
From RidgeRun OpenSource
Design of embedded User Interfaces is not a trivial tasks, as it involves several factors: device's functionality, user's requirements, footprint, licensing, hardware capabilities.
Let's do a survey of most used graphical toolkits available in embedded world.
[edit] DirectFB
Is a lightweight graphic library with support for drawing primitives, input device handling, simple event management, and font rendering. However it also supports hardware acceleration, and is easily expansible. DirectFB provides all the fundamental pieces for writing UIs, but require programming of some basic functionalities.
DirectFB is a library and is licensed under the LGPL, so it may be linked against proprietary programs. His footprint may be as low as 500kb.
[edit] GTK
The Gimp toolkit is of common use on Linux desktop environments, it provides a full featured widget set (text boxes, lists, combo boxes, etc). Also has great support for internationalization, and font rendering.
GTK uses several different components with diverse licenses, but it can almost always be linked with proprietary code.
GTK requires either X server, or in later versions DirectFB. GTK with his dependencies requires a minimal footprint of 8MB.
