Handling Events¶

Events are sent to a view when it has received user input, must be drawn, or in other situations that may need to be handled such as resizing.

Events are sent to the event handler as a PuglEvent union. The type field defines the type of the event and which field of the union is active. The application must handle at least PUGL_CONFIGURE and PUGL_EXPOSE to draw anything, but there are many other event types.

For example, a basic event handler might look something like this:

static PuglStatus
onEvent(PuglView* view, const PuglEvent* event)
{
  MyApp* app = (MyApp*)puglGetHandle(view);

  switch (event->type) {
  case PUGL_CREATE:
    return setupGraphics(app);
  case PUGL_DESTROY:
    return teardownGraphics(app);
  case PUGL_CONFIGURE:
    return resize(app, event->configure.width, event->configure.height);
  case PUGL_EXPOSE:
    return draw(app, view);
  case PUGL_CLOSE:
    return quit(app);
  case PUGL_BUTTON_PRESS:
     return onButtonPress(app, view, event->button);
  default:
    break;
  }

  return PUGL_SUCCESS;
}

Using the Graphics Context¶

Drawing¶

Note that Pugl uses a different drawing model than many libraries, particularly those designed for game-style main loops like SDL and GLFW.

In that style of code, drawing is performed imperatively in the main loop, but with Pugl, the application must draw only while handling an expose event. This is because Pugl supports event-driven applications that only draw the damaged region when necessary, and handles exposure internally to provide optimized and consistent behavior across platforms.

Cairo Context¶

A Cairo context is created for each PuglExposeEvent, and only exists during the handling of that event. Null is returned by puglGetContext() at any other time.

OpenGL Context¶

The OpenGL context is only active during the handling of these events:

As always, drawing is only possible during an expose.

Vulkan Context¶

With Vulkan, the graphics context is managed by the application rather than Pugl. However, drawing must still only be performed during an expose.