LCUI is a component-based, cross-platform UI toolkit for building desktop applications using C, TypeScript, and JSX. It provides a declarative UI compiler that transforms JSX and TypeScript markup into native C code, enabling developers to construct interfaces without a browser runtime. The library includes a CSS styling engine that applies standard CSS rules to layout and style native desktop components, and supports component composition with state management and event binding.
The toolkit distinguishes itself by combining web development patterns with native desktop rendering, allowing developers to write interfaces using JSX and TypeScript that compile directly into executable code. It offers a component prototype system for defining custom components with lifecycle methods, and supports declarative XML interface loading for building component trees at runtime. The library includes density-aware scaling for adapting interfaces to different screen pixel densities, and provides flow and flexbox layout models controlled by CSS display properties.
LCUI manages the full application lifecycle from initialization through the main event loop to shutdown, and binds user interactions to logic functions through its event handling system. It supports both Windows and Linux platforms from a single codebase, and offers project scaffolding to generate the necessary files and build configuration for new projects. The library can be integrated either through prebuilt binary installation or by including source code directly.