Documentation

Limn is a UI toolkit for desktop Java. You add two dependencies, write plain Java, and get a window with your own widgets in it. There is no markup language, no annotation processor and no build plugin; a screen is a method that returns a widget.

Start here

If you have never run it, Install and first window takes about five minutes and ends with a window on screen. Widgets and scenes is the twenty-minute version of everything else: the four ideas the rest of the guide builds on.

Building a screen

Layout and Forms are the two pages most applications need first, and both carry a complete worked example with the screenshot it produces. Lists and scrolling covers long content; Menus and dialogs covers the parts that leave the window; and Charts covers bars, lines and donuts.

Making it yours

Theming is colour, shape and density, including building a palette of your own and letting your users build one. Text and languages is what to do when your users are not all reading English. Images and media covers pictures, video and the 3D viewport.

Shipping

Background work is the one rule that will bite you if you skip it: anything slow goes off the UI thread, and the toolkit gives you a shape for that. Packaging turns the result into something you can send someone.

Looking for the API?

Every class, method and parameter is in the API reference. This guide explains how the pieces fit together; the reference is what you keep open while you type.