Turns the desktop from a fixed set of hand-drawn panels into a real
environment applications can be written against.
SUB-WT immediate-mode toolkit (gui/gui_widgets.c):
Buttons, labels, checkboxes, radios, sliders, list boxes, text fields, tab
bars, scrollbars, progress bars, sparklines and badges. An app feeds the WM
event into the toolkit and then calls widgets from its paint routine, so
each call both draws the control and reports what the user did with it --
no retained widget tree to keep in sync with window state.
Icons and dialogs:
gui_icons.c holds 14 16x16 palette-indexed glyphs stored as hex text, so the
art stays hand-editable and picks up theme changes for free; they scale by
integer factors and can be drawn as tint stencils. gui_dialog.c adds modal
info/warning/error/confirm dialogs that dim the desktop, take exclusive
input, word-wrap on spaces and report results through a callback.
Applications (gui/gui_apps_ext.c):
Settings (tabbed appearance/input/power), Task Manager (live process table
over task_find_by_pid with memory and heap gauges), Kernel Log viewer (reads
the dmesg ring, strips ANSI, colours by severity, scrolls), KTest Runner
(drives the in-kernel suites and reports 21/21 with timing), Clock & Calendar
(Zeller's congruence month grid) and a Text Editor.
Window manager (gui/gui_wm.c):
Minimize/maximize/restore buttons, a corner resize grip, edge snapping, tile
and cascade layouts, F5-F9 shortcuts, title truncation, and index-based
enumeration so the taskbar no longer assumes window ids stay dense.
Desktop shell (gui/gui_desktop.c):
Launcher icon grid, richer start menu, right-click context menu, taskbar
buttons that minimize and restore, and a live CPU trace in the tray.
Two interaction bugs fixed along the way:
- keyboard_get_key() blocks until a key arrives, so calling it every frame
froze the compositor; it is now gated on keyboard_has_key(), and stale
console input is drained before the first frame.
- When the desktop consumed a click, the WM's press-edge detector kept the
pre-press state and read the still-held button as a fresh press on the
next frame, stealing focus from whatever the click had just opened.
gui_wm_sync_button_state() keeps the two layers in step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01L5yKJT4Wo2cV3rfPrwY5MP
- Upgrade resolution to 800x600 @ 32bpp TrueColor with Bochs/QEMU VBE LFB
- Implement full 8042 Aux PS/2 mouse controller driver on IRQ 12 (vector 44) with packet decode and bounds clamping
- Add high-definition 8x16 font rasterizer with text drop shadows for sharp typography
- Upgrade to smooth 16x24 anti-aliased cursor with dark slate outline and drop shadow
- Increase titlebars to 24px and taskbar to 32px with modern desktop styling
- Re-architect applications (SysMon, Terminal, Explorer, Calc, Paint, About) for spacious high-res display
- Integrate Bochs/QEMU VBE physical LFB mapping directly to hardware video memory (0xFD000000)
- Update kernel boot sequence to directly boot into GUI Desktop by default
- Fall back to Emergency Kernel TTY Mode upon GUI exit (Esc key / Exit menu item)
- Support 'nogui', 'text', 'emergency', and 'single' boot arguments to boot directly into text mode
- Remove frame limits so GUI runs persistently
- Create separate feature branch 'feat/gui-desktop'
- Implement double-buffered 2D graphics engine with alpha blending, gradients, rounded rects, and font rasterization in gui/gui_gfx.c and include/gui/gui_gfx.h
- Implement alpha-blended mouse pointer overlay in gui/gui_cursor.c and include/gui/gui_cursor.h
- Implement SUB-WM Window Manager with draggable titlebars, close/minimize buttons, drop shadows, and event routing in gui/gui_wm.c and include/gui/gui_wm.h
- Implement Cyberpunk/Nord desktop environment with wallpaper, taskbar, start menu popup, and system tray in gui/gui_desktop.c and include/gui/gui_desktop.h
- Implement built-in GUI apps: System Performance Monitor, GUI Terminal Emulator, File Explorer, Calculator, Paint Studio, and About dialog in gui/gui_apps.c and include/gui/gui_apps.h
- Add 'startx', 'gui', and 'desktop' applets in LazyBox suite
- Verified multi-architecture compilation across x86_64, AArch64, and ARMv8i
