Using the Lua Programming Language to Create a Graphical User Interface

Most toolkits for graphical user interfaces organize the elements of the user interface, typically called "widgets", in a hierarchy: Starting with some container like a dialog or window at the top, the elements like push buttons, labels, or layout managers are added. To add new elements a set of C functions is provided which are called with a handle to the parent widget, the class (or type) of widget that is to be added plus any further arguments like e.g. a label string in the case of a push button. While it is relatively easy to expose the widget creation and managing functions to Lua, the resulting Lua program will still closely resemble the same functionality coded in C. So the aim is to use Lua's table constructors to define a GUI instead of calling the widget creation routines.

read more