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Theme

Images and media

Pictures

Section titled “Pictures”

Images loads them and ImageView shows them:

Image logo = Images.fromResource("app/logo.png");
ImageView view = new ImageView(logo);

Images.load(Path), Images.fromResource(String) and Images.decode(byte[]) all read on the thread that calls them, which is fine during startup and not fine in a click handler. Each has an …Async twin that does the work on the worker pool and hands the result back on the UI thread. Use those anywhere a frame is already running:

Images.loadAsync(path).thenAccept(image -> view.setImage(image));

Going the other way, Images.encode(…) and Images.saveAsync(…) write PNG.

Icons

Section titled “Icons”

The toolkit takes an Icon wherever a small vector mark belongs: a button, a text field’s leading slot, a menu item. Icons are drawn as paths rather than loaded as bitmaps, so they stay sharp at every control size and pick up the theme’s colour.

The limn-icons-tabler artifact packages the Tabler icon set if you would rather not draw your own — one enum constant per icon, drawn through the same SvgIcon. It is versioned with Tabler rather than with the toolkit (3.46.0.x is Tabler 3.46.0), so it stays in your cache across Limn upgrades:

implementation("io.github.limn-toolkit:limn-icons-tabler:3.46.0.0")

Sound

Section titled “Sound”
AudioClip click = Sounds.fromResource("app/click.wav");
Sounds.play(click);

WAV, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 decode out of the box. Sounds.isAvailable() reports whether an audio device was found at all. On a machine with none, playback is a no-op rather than an exception, so a game does not need a silent-mode branch.

Loading is I/O, so prefer Sounds.loadAsync(…) and Sounds.fromResourceAsync(…) once the window is up.

Video

Section titled “Video”

VideoView is a widget. Give it a source and it plays:

VideoView view = new VideoView(source);
view.setFit(VideoView.Fit.CONTAIN);
view.setLooping(true);

It is a widget in every sense: a scroll view clips it, a stack draws over it, and it takes part in layout like a label does. The decoder behind it is a separate concern:

  • The pure-Java decoders ship in limn-toolkit itself, with no native code and no third-party dependency. They read Y4M and generate test patterns, which is enough to drive the widget and not enough to play a film.

  • limn-video-ffmpeg decodes H.264 and AAC in MP4 through a trimmed FFmpeg. The FFmpeg libraries are a separate artifact, limn-ffmpeg-natives, versioned with FFmpeg rather than with the toolkit (so it stays in your cache across Limn upgrades), one natives-<os>-<arch> classifier per desktop target, for the same platforms the backend covers (macOS, Windows and Linux, x64 and ARM64 alike); add the one your machine is, or limn-video-ffmpeg-natives-all, a POM versioned with the toolkit that names all six at the payload version this release was tested with, for a bundle that ships everywhere. The JNI shim comes with limn-video-ffmpeg itself. Leave the libraries out and the decoder reports itself unavailable and everything else keeps working. They are LGPL (version 2.1 or later) and each jar carries the licence text and notice alongside them; Packaging has what shipping them means.

    implementation("io.github.limn-toolkit:limn-video-ffmpeg:0.7.0")
    // A build for one known machine takes the payload's classifier for it:
    runtimeOnly("io.github.limn-toolkit:limn-ffmpeg-natives:7.1.5.0:natives-macos-aarch64")
    // A bundle that ships everywhere takes the POM that names all six:
    runtimeOnly("io.github.limn-toolkit:limn-video-ffmpeg-natives-all:0.7.0")

Subtitles ride along with the video’s own container: select the track before you start reading, and the player hands you timed text to draw however your design wants it.

3D

Section titled “3D”

Viewport3D renders a scene to a texture and composites it as a 2D layer, so it is another ordinary widget:

Viewport3D viewport = new Viewport3D();
viewport.setRenderer(renderer);
viewport.setPreferredSize(480, 320);
viewport.frameContent(model.bounds());

It renders physically-based materials to a linear high-dynamic-range target and applies the display transform once, when the result is composited, which is why a bright highlight in the viewport does not clip differently from the rest of your window.

setAnimated(true) asks for a frame every tick; leave it off and the viewport only redraws when something changes, which is what you want for a static model on a laptop battery. onClick gives you a ray through the pointer for picking, and captureNext hands you the next rendered frame as an Image.

The 3D viewport, composited into an ordinary window.The 3D viewport, composited into an ordinary window.
The 3D viewport, composited into an ordinary window.