Components

Components are the views you build an interface from. They live in package ui, the file picker in ui/filepicker and the video player in ui/videoplayer. Every page shows a screenshot, the code that drew it, how to use the component well and its API. The pages are grouped into:

Views are values

A constructor such as ui.Text or ui.Button returns a concrete value type: ui.TextView, ui.ButtonView. Every one of them implements gift.View. You configure it with chained methods, and each method returns the same concrete type, so the chain keeps all methods of the view available:

ui.VStack(
	ui.Box().Frame(80, 24).Background(ui.RGB(200, 40, 40)),
	ui.Spacer(),
	ui.Box().Frame(80, 24),
).Gap(8).Padding(16).CornerRadius(12)

A method never changes the value it is called on. It returns a changed copy. If you build a view step by step, assign the result:

t := ui.Text("Hello")
t.FontSize(20)     // no effect, the result is discarded
t = t.FontSize(20) // correct

A modifier sets a field of the view. It does not wrap the view in another one, so the drawing order is fixed (shadow, background, content, border) and setting a modifier twice replaces the first value. Modifiers explains the details.

Each view has only the modifiers it honors

There is no shared modifier interface. A view has exactly the methods it acts on: a ui.Divider() has Color, Thickness, Inset, Flex and Key, but no Padding or Background, because it would ignore them. A call that would do nothing does not compile. The one documented exception is the ZStack: it honors its own Flex but ignores the Flex of its children, see ZStack.

The API section of every page lists the constructors and methods of the view. The common modifiers, such as Frame, Padding or Background, are collapsed into one line that links to Modifiers.

What is not there

gift has no checkbox, radio button, drop-down, menu, tooltip or general grid layout. Use a toggle for an on and off setting, a segmented control for a small set of choices and a list of rows with chevrons for longer ones. When you need something else, compose it from the views here or write a custom view.