Hawkynt.NativeForms 1.0.0.245

Hawkynt.NativeForms

A trim- and AOT-compatible UI toolkit with a Windows Forms-shaped API, rendering through real platform widgets where it counts and owner-drawing everything else in the host platform's visual style.

📦 Installation

dotnet add package Hawkynt.NativeForms

This is the platform-agnostic core: the controls, layout, binding and theming, plus the backend abstraction. It renders nothing on its own — add at least one backend and register it before creating a window.

✨ Features

• A System.Windows.Forms-shaped API: Form, Button, Label, a Controls collection, Click events — without depending on System.Windows.Forms.
• Real native widgets for the window and the text-bearing primitives; every other control is owner-drawn in the host platform's own visual style.
• Reflection-free by construction, so the whole surface survives trimming and NativeAOT. The [GridEditable] source generator ships with this package as a compile-time analyzer; nothing to reference at runtime.
• MVVM, MVC and MVP are first-class: ObservableObject, RelayCommand/RelayCommand<T> and a reflection-free two-way PropertyBinding<T> in Hawkynt.NativeForms.ComponentModel.
• A backend a consumer references but never registers is dropped again by the trimmer.

🧩 Support matrix

Control families implemented and tested on Windows and Linux. Each family's controls are documented one page per control in the repository docs.

🚀 Quick start

using Hawkynt.NativeForms;
using Hawkynt.NativeForms.Backends;
using Hawkynt.NativeForms.Backends.Windows;

BackendRegistry.Register(new Win32Backend());

var form = new Form { Text = "Hello", Bounds = new(0, 0, 320, 160) };
var button = new Button { Text = "Click me", Bounds = new(20, 20, 140, 36) };
button.Click += (_, _) => button.Text = "Clicked!";
form.Controls.Add(button);

Application.Run(form);

📚 API reference

Every public and protected member of all 311 types, generated from the built assembly and its XML documentation, is in REFERENCE.md.

🔌 Dependencies

This package renders nothing by itself. Reference the backends for the platforms you ship on:

⚠️ Limitations

• Nothing renders until a backend is registered. Referencing a backend package is not enough.
• The macOS backend is published but not implemented: every entry point throws.
• The focus model, live DPI and dark-mode switching, accessibility and native-peer promotion are incomplete. docs/PRD.md is the authoritative per-box checklist.
• Controls are implemented and tested on Windows and Linux. Other platforms are untested.

❤️ Support

If this project saves you time or money, consider supporting its development:

📜 License

Licensed under LGPL-3.0-or-later — see the repository LICENSE.