Canvas GUI

Note  the GUI API documentation can be found here: Canvas GUI API

Canvas - the FlightGear 2D drawing API
Canvas - Main Page Canvas News - for the latest developments Shiva Alternatives - ongoing work for Core Profile support Canvas FAQs - frequently asked questions Canvas - Getting started Canvas Development (core) Canvas Troubleshooting (core) Canvas Sandbox (core) PUI2Canvas (PUI/XML Parser) Canvas GUI Canvas Widgets Canvas Maps Canvas Snippets
RFC
Canvas Instancing Howto:New Canvas Execution Model Canvas SVG Canvas Popout Windows Canvas Scenery Overlays
Frameworks
Canvas Map API (soon deprecated!) Canvas MapStructure Canvas MapStructure Layers MapStructure Snippets Canvas Radar Canvas Animation Framework (WIP) Canvas Plotting Framework (WIP) Canvas MFD Framework Canvas ND Framework Canvas PFD Framework Canvas MCDU Framework Canvas EFB Framework Canvas Wrappers Canvas Glass Cockpit Efforts
Tutorials
Howto: Canvas Troubleshooting Howto:Adding a canvas to a GUI dialog (PUI!) Howto:Creating a Canvas GUI dialog file (New) Howto:Dynamic Liveries via Canvas (new) Howto:Creating a Canvas GUI Widget Howto:Add a 2D canvas instrument to your aircraft Howto:Parsing 2D Instruments using the Canvas Howto:Creating fullscreen Canvas applications Howto:Use SVG inside a Canvas Howto:Extend the Canvas SVG module Howto:Serializing a Canvas to SVG Howto:Canvas applications as Nasal submodules Howto:Using raster images and nested canvases Canvas HUD Howto:Project 3D to 2D coordinates on desktop canvas
Reference
Canvas Element Image Path Canvas Nasal API MessageBox Layout System Canvas GUI API Canvas draw library Event Handling
Related
Canvas Properties Unifying the 2D rendering backend via canvas Howto:Use a Camera View in an Instrument Howto:Extending Canvas to support rendering 3D models Howto:Extending Canvas to support MathGL
To be ported
Navigation display Map FGCanvas Canvas Nasal/JavaScript Subset
Deprecated by Canvas
Complex Glass Cockpit Avionics
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The Canvas GUI is going to replace the old PUI in version 2024.2.

The canvas menu in 2024.2 nightly.

Background

See also Canvas widget matrix.

In order and switch to the core profile, the PUI will be phased out completely. We now have the Canvas system, and there’s a formal decision to modernize the GUI using the Canvas, and completely replace PUI sooner rather than later.

The shortcomings of PUI in particular, have been repeatedly brought up on the devel list over the years. It was a lot of work to get rid of hard-coded PUI dialogs, and we still have a bunch of hard-coded PUI widgets – as long as we have those, getting totally rid of PUI will be increasingly difficult, because each hard-coded widget will either need to be phased out or manually ported.

Creating canvas widgets

See Howto:Creating a Canvas GUI Widget for the main article about this subject.

PUI widgets

See pui2canvas for the main article about this subject.

There is a Nasal/Canvas module dynamically "translating" legacy PUI/XML dialogs into Canvas dialogs (at runtime), in fgdata/Nasal/gui/XMLDialog.nas