Introduction#
The Slint Language#
Slint comes with an easy to learn and use language for you to describe user interfaces with. It is readable to both humans and machines.
This way, we have excellent tooling on one side, while also enabling designers and developers to know exactly what happens, by reading the code their machine uses to display the user interfaces.
This Slint language is either interpreted at run-time or compiled to native code, which gets built into your application together with the code in the same programming language providing the business logic. The Slint compiler can optimize the user interface and any resources it uses at compile time, so that user interfaces written in Slint use few resources, with regards to performance and storage.
The Slint language enforces a separation of user interface from business logic, using interfaces you can define for your project. This enables a fearless cooperation between design-focused team members and those concentrating on the programming side of the project.
The Slint design markup language describes extensible graphical user interfaces using the Slint framework
Place and compose a tree of visual elements in a window using a textual representation.
Configure the appearance of elements via properties. For example a Text element has a text property, while a Rectangle element has a background color.
Assign binding expressions to properties to automatically compute values that depend on other properties.
Group binding expressions together with named states and conditions.
Declare animations on properties and states to make the user interface feel alive.
Build your own re-usable components and share them in .slint module files.
Define data structures and models and access them from programming languages.
Build highly customized user interfaces with the builtin elements and pre-built widgets provided.
It only describes the user interface and it is not a programming language. The business logic is written in a different programming language using the Slint API.
Getting Started#
To use Slint you need to embed your slint files in a project written in a supported programming language, like C++, Rust, or JavaScript.
There are three different pathways to get started with Slint:
SlintPad - Use this to get a feel of the Slint design markup language. This is a web browser-based tool where you can try Slint out.
As a UI Designer, working with Slint files locally, we recommend the following combination of software tools:
Visual Studio Code
The Slint for Visual Studio Code Extension
As a Software Developer, integrating Slint into a new or existing code base, choose one of these languages to get started: