Getting started

Requirements

• Node.js >= 20.19 (the package is ESM; CJS consumers on >= 20.19 can still require('ntk'))
• An X server (any Linux desktop, Xvfb, XQuartz on macOS, …)
• fontconfig (fc-match) for CSS-style font name resolution — present on virtually every system that runs X11. Only needed if you use ctx.font = '...'; loading fonts by file path works without it.

All dependencies are pure JavaScript — there is nothing to compile at install time.

npm install ntk

First window

import { createClient } from 'ntk';

const app = await createClient();
const wnd = app.createWindow({ width: 500, height: 300, title: 'Hello' });
wnd.on('mousedown', (ev) => wnd.setTitle(`click: ${ev.x},${ev.y}`));
wnd.map();

createClient() returns a Promise<App>; a node-style callback createClient((err, app) => {}) is also still supported.

Drawing

const ctx = wnd.getContext('2d');
ctx.fillStyle = 'red';
ctx.fillRect(10, 10, 100, 100);

See context-2d.md for the full drawing API and window.md for events.

Headless / CI

Everything works against Xvfb:

xvfb-run -a node my-app.js

The ntk test suite itself runs this way in CI.