Jalium.UI

Jalium.UI is a GPU-accelerated, cross-platform UI framework for .NET 10. It combines a WPF-style object model, JALXAML markup with Razor syntax extensions, and platform-native rendering backends (DirectX 12, Vulkan, Metal, Software).

Project Status

Active development — v26.10.2-preview (APIs can still evolve between minor versions)
Primary target: Windows 10/11 x64
Cross-platform: Android (arm64-v8a, x86_64), Linux (Vulkan), macOS (Metal)
Runtime target: .NET 10 (net10.0-windows, net10.0-android, net10.0)
Rendering: DirectX 12 (Windows), Vulkan (Linux/Android), Metal (macOS), Software fallback

Why Jalium.UI

GPU-native rendering pipeline with ClearType sub-pixel text rendering
Familiar programming model (DependencyObject, UIElement, panels, templates, resources)
JALXAML markup with Razor syntax extensions (@Path, @(expr), @{ ... }, @if/@section/@RenderSection)
Rich control library: 80+ controls including Charts, Ribbon, Docking, InkCanvas, WebView, Terminal, WindowsFormsHost
Build-time tooling via NuGet (Jalium.UI.Build, Jalium.UI.Xaml.SourceGenerator)
UIA accessibility support with automation peers
Visual effects: liquid glass, backdrop blur, acrylic, mica, transition shaders, animated bitmaps (GIF / APNG / animated WebP)
Grapheme-cluster aware text editing (UAX#29) — emoji, ZWJ sequences, skin-tone modifiers, country flags never split
Self-contained Jalium.Extensions.* stack (Hosting / DI / Configuration / Options / Logging / Metrics) — no Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting dependency
Native audio pipeline (miniaudio + dr_libs / minimp3) with WSOLA pitch-preserving time-stretching

Framework Composition

Managed Packages

Package	Responsibility
`Jalium.UI.Core`	Dependency property system, visual tree, layout, routed events, binding, animation
`Jalium.UI.Media`	Brushes, geometry, drawing primitives, text formatting, imaging, visual effects
`Jalium.UI.Input`	Mouse, keyboard, touch, stylus input abstractions and routing
`Jalium.UI.Interop`	Managed/native bridge, P/Invoke, runtime native dependency packaging
`Jalium.UI.Gpu`	GPU resource management, render graph, materials, shaders, backend abstraction
`Jalium.UI.Controls`	Controls, panels, templates, windowing, themes, docking, charts
`Jalium.UI.Xaml`	JALXAML parse/load pipeline, Razor syntax support, markup services
`Jalium.UI.Build`	MSBuild tasks and build assets for JALXAML compilation workflow
`Jalium.UI.Xaml.SourceGenerator`	Roslyn source generator for XAML/code-behind integration
`Jalium.UI.Compiler`	Standalone `jalxamlc.exe` compiler tool
`Jalium.UI`	Metapackage that references the full framework stack

Native Modules

Module	Platforms	Responsibility
`jalium.native.core`	All	Native core runtime, backend registry, context management
`jalium.native.d3d12`	Windows	DirectX 12 render target and Vello GPU pipeline
`jalium.native.vulkan`	Linux, Android	Vulkan render backend
`jalium.native.metal`	macOS	Metal render backend
`jalium.native.software`	All	CPU-based software rendering fallback
`jalium.native.platform`	All	Platform abstraction (window, input, events)
`jalium.native.text`	Linux, Android	Cross-platform text engine (FreeType + HarfBuzz)
`jalium.native.browser`	Windows	WebView2 browser integration
`jalium.native.media.core`	All	Cross-platform media C ABI + shared audio (miniaudio / dr_libs / minimp3 / stb_vorbis)
`jalium.native.media.windows`	Windows	Media Foundation video / camera / AAC decoder + WIC imaging
`jalium.native.aot`	All	NativeAOT aggregator (hard-links media, text, backends)

Platform Packages

Package	Target
`Jalium.UI.Desktop`	`net10.0-windows` — Desktop distribution with native DLLs
`Jalium.UI.Android`	`net10.0-android` — Android distribution with native .so libraries

Capability Overview

Layout and Visual Tree

Core panels: Grid, StackPanel, Canvas, DockPanel, WrapPanel, UniformGrid
Virtualization: VirtualizingStackPanel, DataGrid presenters/panels
Docking: DockLayout, DockSplitPanel, DockTabPanel, Split
Window-level layout host, overlay layer, title bar composition, chrome integration

Controls

Input: Button, TextBox, PasswordBox, NumberBox, AutoCompleteBox, ComboBox, Slider, CheckBox, RadioButton
Data: TreeView, DataGrid, TreeDataGrid, ListBox, ListView
Navigation: NavigationView, TabControl, Ribbon, CommandBar, MenuBar
Documents: FlowDocumentViewer, FlowDocumentReader, FlowDocumentScrollViewer, Markdown
Charts: Category, DateTime, Logarithmic axes with chart legend
Rich: InkCanvas, WebView/WebBrowser, EditControl, QRCode (self-hosted encoder), TitleBar, Terminal
Interop: WindowsFormsHost (host System.Windows.Forms controls on net10.0-windows)
Printing: PrintDialog backed by a native Win32 platform layer
Notifications: Toast-style notification system

Text Editing

Grapheme-cluster aware caret, selection, word break and delete across TextBox, PasswordBox, EditControl, RichTextBox, TextBlock, Label, Markdown, Terminal and TextEffectPresenter — emoji (ZWJ / skin-tone / country flags / combining marks) are never split mid-cluster (UAX#29 via StringInfo.GetTextElementEnumerator).
IME suppression for password / read-only fields so composing input cannot mutate protected editor state.
Multi-encoding file IO with BOM auto-detection (LoadFromFile / SaveToFile on TextBox, EditControl, Markdown, RichTextBox). CodePagesEncodingProvider registered via a ModuleInitializer so GBK / Shift-JIS / any non-default code page works out of the box.
Terminal adds an Encoding property and stateful Decoder so output bytes are decoded in the user's terminal encoding without splitting multi-byte sequences.
WPF-aligned TextBox.CharacterCasing / MinLines / MaxLines, ComboBox.StaysOpenOnEdit.

Text Rendering

ClearType sub-pixel text rendering with dual-source blending.
CPU rasterization fallback path.
Cross-platform text shaping via FreeType + HarfBuzz (Linux/Android).
Per-element TextOptions.{TextRenderingMode, TextFormattingMode, TextHintingMode} inheritable attached properties — values flow through FormattedText → native JaliumTextFormat and reach the rasterizer:
- D3D12: GlyphKey includes (aaMode, hintingMode); RasterizeGlyph honours key.mode.
- Vulkan / Windows: LOGFONT.lfQuality flips between bilevel / smoothed / ClearType; font cache + text cache + GDI font pool keys all include fontQuality.
Process-wide rendering mode override + colour-emoji rasterization.

Input Pipeline

Pointer and keyboard routing with hit testing
Touch and stylus pathways with gesture recognition
Scroll and manipulation event handling

GPU Rendering & Effects

DirectX 12 with Vello GPU compute pipeline (path, clip, tile stages)
Backdrop effects: blur, acrylic, mica, frosted glass
Liquid glass with refraction, chromatic aberration
Transition shaders and element effects (blur, drop shadow)
Animated bitmaps: GIF, APNG, animated WebP
Custom shader support via HLSL
Bitmap downscale cache + virtualizing wrap panel for large image grids
Unified path/bitmap telemetry C ABI surfaced in DevTools Perf tab

Hosting / DI / Configuration

Self-contained Jalium.Extensions.* stack lives inside Jalium.UI.Controls (no Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting package or any of its 18 transitive deps).
Covers Hosting (HostBuilder / Host / HostApplicationBuilder), DependencyInjection (incl. keyed services + ActivatorUtilities), Configuration (Json / Xml / Ini / Memory / CommandLine / UserSecrets), Options (with DataAnnotations validation), Logging (LoggerMessage source-generator inclusive), Metrics, Caching, FileProviders, FileSystemGlobbing, ObjectPool, Primitives.
Console support is intentionally not implemented.

Audio Pipeline

Native MiniAudioDevice playback + NativeAudioDecoder covering WAV / FLAC / MP3 / Vorbis (cross-platform) and AAC (Windows via Media Foundation).
Managed IAudioProcessor chain with WsolaSpeedProcessor for pitch-preserving time-stretching.
Audio TUs are compiled into each per-platform jalium.native.media.* library so symbols land in the same DLL the managed P/Invoke loads.

3D Animation Types

Point3DAnimation, Rotation3DAnimation, Size3DAnimation, Vector3DAnimation complete the WPF animation type set.

Accessibility

UIA automation peers for core and specialized controls
Chart, DiffViewer, HexEditor, JsonTreeViewer, Map, PropertyGrid automation
Window.ResolveCursor returns the standard arrow for disabled elements so hover state cannot be confused with enabled controls.

Markup and Tooling

Runtime parsing: Jalium.UI.Markup.XamlReader
Build integration through packaged MSBuild targets/tasks
Source generator for compile-time JALXAML code-behind
Source generator compile-time lowering of Razor directives — see below.

Razor Syntax in JALXAML

JALXAML supports Razor-style syntax as additive sugar on top of existing {Binding ...}:

@Path
@(expr)
@{ ... }
mixed text templates (for string/object targets)
@if(expr){<Element />} block directives (with full else if / else chains)
@section/@RenderSection for templated content
escapes: @@ and \@

Binding source resolution is DataContext first, then code-behind fallback.

Update behavior:

Observable source (INotifyPropertyChanged / dependency property): real-time updates.
Non-observable CLR source: one-time evaluation at load.

Compile-time lowering

The JALXAML source generator lowers the following at build time so there is no runtime parsing cost in the hot path:

@if / @else if / @else chains.
@section / @RenderSection.
Value expressions (@Path, @(expr)).
{Binding ...} via SetCompiledBinding (SG SplitParameters is kept line-for-line consistent with the runtime parser).
Custom-xmlns element types — when a .jalxaml uses a controls library exposed through XmlnsDefinition, the SG resolves the CLR type at compile time instead of falling back to runtime reflection (helps trimming / AOT).

Setter.Value is intentionally NOT lowered.

For syntax details and rules, see docs/razor-syntax.md.

Installation

Recommended (metapackage)

dotnet add package Jalium.UI

Platform-specific

# Windows Desktop
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Desktop

# Android
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Android

Granular install (advanced)

dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Core
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Media
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Input
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Interop
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Gpu
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Controls
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Xaml
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Build
dotnet add package Jalium.UI.Xaml.SourceGenerator

Quick Start (C#)

using Jalium.UI.Controls;

var app = new Application();

var window = new Window
{
    Title = "Hello Jalium.UI",
    Width = 960,
    Height = 640,
    Content = new StackPanel
    {
        Margin = new Thickness(24),
        Children =
        {
            new TextBlock { Text = "Jalium.UI", FontSize = 28 },
            new TextBlock { Text = "GPU-accelerated .NET UI framework", Margin = new Thickness(0, 8, 0, 16) },
            new Button { Content = "Start" }
        }
    }
};

app.Run(window);

Quick Start (JALXAML runtime parse)

using Jalium.UI.Controls;
using Jalium.UI.Markup;

var app = new Application();

var xaml = """
<Window xmlns="https://jalium.dev/ui" Title="JALXAML Window" Width="800" Height="500">
  <Grid>
    <StackPanel Margin="20">
      <TextBlock Text="Hello from JALXAML" FontSize="24"/>
      <Button Content="Click" Margin="0,12,0,0"/>
    </StackPanel>
  </Grid>
</Window>
""";

var window = (Window)XamlReader.Parse(xaml);
app.Run(window);

Build From Source

Prerequisites

.NET 10 SDK (net10.0-windows)
Visual Studio with C++ workload (for native modules)
Vulkan SDK (optional, for Vulkan backend)
Android NDK (optional, for Android builds)

Build

# Build the full framework
dotnet build src/packaging/Jalium.UI/Jalium.UI.csproj -c Release

# Run tests
dotnet test tests/Jalium.UI.Tests/Jalium.UI.Tests.csproj -c Release

# Build native modules (in VS Developer Command Prompt)
msbuild src/native/Jalium.Native.sln /m /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

# Build for Android
bash src/native/build-android-deps.sh  # FreeType + HarfBuzz
bash src/native/build-android.sh       # Native libraries

NuGet Packaging

dotnet pack src/packaging/Jalium.UI/Jalium.UI.csproj -c Release -o artifacts/nuget

For detailed build configuration, see docs/manual-build-configuration.md.

Repository Layout

Jalium.UI/
  src/
    managed/
      Jalium.UI.Core/          # Dependency property system, visual tree, layout
      Jalium.UI.Media/         # Brushes, geometry, drawing, text, imaging
      Jalium.UI.Input/         # Input abstractions and routing
      Jalium.UI.Interop/       # Native bridge and P/Invoke
      Jalium.UI.Gpu/           # GPU resources, render graph, shaders
      Jalium.UI.Controls/      # Controls, panels, themes, docking, charts
      Jalium.UI.Xaml/          # JALXAML parser and Razor support
      Jalium.UI.Build/         # MSBuild tasks for JALXAML compilation
      Jalium.UI.Xaml.SourceGenerator/  # Roslyn source generator
      Jalium.UI.Compiler/      # Standalone JALXAML compiler
    native/
      jalium.native.core/      # Native runtime core
      jalium.native.d3d12/     # DirectX 12 + Vello GPU backend
      jalium.native.vulkan/    # Vulkan backend
      jalium.native.metal/     # Metal backend (macOS)
      jalium.native.software/  # CPU software renderer
      jalium.native.platform/  # Platform abstraction layer
      jalium.native.text/      # FreeType + HarfBuzz text engine
      jalium.native.browser/   # WebView2 integration
    packaging/
      Jalium.UI/               # Main metapackage
      Jalium.UI.Desktop/       # Windows desktop package
      Jalium.UI.Android/       # Android package
  tests/
    Jalium.UI.Tests/           # xUnit test suite (70+ test classes)
    Jalium.UI.ShaderDemo/      # Shader effects demo
  docs/
    razor-syntax.md            # Razor syntax reference
    drawing-api.md             # Drawing API documentation
    manual-build-configuration.md  # Build configuration guide

Documentation

Document	Description
`docs/razor-syntax.md`	Razor syntax reference for JALXAML
`docs/drawing-api.md`	Drawing API (DrawingContext, GPU effects, rendering)
`docs/manual-build-configuration.md`	Manual build configuration guide

Visual Studio Extension Notes

The VSIX can be installed into either:

Normal instance: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\18.0_<instanceId>\Extensions
Experimental instance (/rootsuffix Exp): %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\18.0_<instanceId>Exp\Extensions

If .jalxaml IntelliSense only shows raw XML suggestions, verify the extension is installed in the same instance you are using.

Compatibility Notes

Jalium.UI is not positioned as a drop-in WPF replacement yet.
API names and behavior are intentionally close to familiar WPF concepts, but differences exist.
Keep package versions aligned across all Jalium.UI.* packages.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. For large changes, include:

Motivation and design summary
Behavioral impact/risk
Validation steps (tests or manual verification)

Community

For discussions, questions, or community support, you can join the QQ group:

QQ: 1079778999

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 279 Commits
docs		docs
src		src
tests		tests
.gitattributes		.gitattributes
.gitignore		.gitignore
CLAUDE.md		CLAUDE.md
Directory.Build.props		Directory.Build.props
Jalium.UI.slnx		Jalium.UI.slnx
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
global.json		global.json
nuget.config		nuget.config

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Jalium.UI

Project Status

Why Jalium.UI

Framework Composition

Managed Packages

Native Modules

Platform Packages

Capability Overview

Layout and Visual Tree

Controls

Text Editing

Text Rendering

Input Pipeline

GPU Rendering & Effects

Hosting / DI / Configuration

Audio Pipeline

3D Animation Types

Accessibility

Markup and Tooling

Razor Syntax in JALXAML

Compile-time lowering

Installation

Recommended (metapackage)

Platform-specific

Granular install (advanced)

Quick Start (C#)

Quick Start (JALXAML runtime parse)

Build From Source

Prerequisites

Build

NuGet Packaging

Repository Layout

Documentation

Visual Studio Extension Notes

Compatibility Notes

Contributing

Community

License

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