Raw Material Software - Juce  HomeJuceAudio softwareContactShop AboutDownloadsDocumentationLicensingDiscussion forumFAQJuce UsersJUCE Overview JUCE (Jules' Utility Class Extensions) is an all-encompassing C++ class library for developing cross-platform applications.It's particularly good for creating highly-specialised user interfaces and for handling graphics and sound.The intended users are developers like me, who are writing large, complex applications in C++ and who would like to use just one clean, high-level API rather than a bunch of different libraries for different purposes or platforms.Goals My main goals with JUCE were to make it: Exhaustive - if I'm writing an application I don't want to bother linking to lots of different libraries. There's a core of basic functionality that everyone needs - Java programmers already have the JDK to do all this, and I wanted something similar for C++. Literate - class, method and variable names are clear, self-explanatory and written in English rather than abbreviated programmerspeak, to make your code more readable and understandable. Coherent - it should be easy to find the right classes for the task you need to do - and when you find them, it should be obvious how they should be used. All parts of the codebase should be written in exactly the same style. Multi-platform - just recompile to run on PC, Mac and Linux (and maybe more in the future). There shouldn't be any surprises when you run your code on a different platform - GUIs should be look pixel-for-pixel the same on all machines and should behave the same way. Modern C++ - very object-oriented, avoiding macros and older C-style coding wherever possible.LicenceJUCE is released under the GNU Public Licence, which means it can be freely copied and distributed, and costs nothing to use in open-source applications.If you'd like to release a closed-source application that uses JUCE, commercial licencesare available for a fee - click here for more information on pricing and terms.Summary of JUCE's features:There's an awful lot of content in the 150,000 lines of code that make up Juce. Here's an attempt at a list ofthe main things it can do...There's also a complete set of API documentation here, where you can browse throughall the available classes.Core ClassesLarge set of powerful container and unicode string classes.A comprehensive set of file, directory and stream I/O classes, including streams for memory i/o, buffering and zlib-based compression/decompression.A full set of cross-platform threading and multitasking abilities: threads, synchronisation, events, thread-pools, process control, etc.A wide-ranging set of messaging classes provides many options for event-based development: listener and broadcaster classes, timers, asynchronous callbacks, inter-application messaging, and much more.Many utility functions and classes for data conversion, time and date, atomic operations, maths functions, random numbers, etc.Ability to compile only the non-UI classes, for use in writing command-line apps.User Interface A large basic set of components including all the usual suspects: buttons, combo boxes, text editors, listboxes, treeviews, tables, viewports, sliders, tabbed boxes, etc.All drawing is flicker-free, using double-buffering on all platforms.A look-and-feel system allows the look of various UI elements to be changed dynamically, and customised by an application.Windows can use either a Juce platform-independent titlebar and buttons, or the normal platform-specific decorations.OpenGL support on all platforms allows openGL components to be embedded inside Juce components. These can be drawn either using the normal Juce paint event, or on their own thread.Quicktime support allows Quicktime movies to be embedded and controlled through a platform-independent class. (Not available on Linux, obviously).System clipboard support for copying/pasting text.Versatile classes for controlling the resizing of components and other objects, doing all the nasty logic involved in resizing either using a stretchable border or a corner-resizer, and allowing custom constraints, fixed aspect ratios, etcAlert window classes allow anything from a simple "ok" dialog box to a larger alert box with custom components in it.MDI windowing made possible with a multi-document component which can flip between putting its child windows in a tabbed box or as separate floating windowsKeyboard input can be managed in a range of way, from intercepting keys directly to using a key-mapping set to redirect keystrokes to automatically-invoked application level commands. The keyboard model allows events when keys are pressed and released, and changes to modifier keys.Tool-tip support allows tooltips to be done as a floating window, or in any custom style.Property components provide a set of components to represent various types of value as sliders, drop-down lists, text, etc These are shown in a list and make a simple way to display a set of properties for a selected object.Internal drag-and-drop within the same application allows versatile drag-and-drop logic to be acheived, with effects like semi-transparent icons, snapping back when released, etc.External drag-and-drop of files and text can be made to and from other applications.Popup menus and menu bars can contain custom components, and can be used to automatically trigger application commands, display appropriate key shortcuts, and much more.A set of file-browser components can be used to show either an entire file open/close dialog with embedded preview, or any subset of this, such as a navigable file list.Graphic effects like drop-shadows, blurs and glows can be applied to the contents of UI components.Other ready-made UI components are included for specialised purposes like splash-screens, editing a set of key-press mappings, choosing audio device settings, selecting colours using a HSV colour picker, a clickable MIDI keyboard, lassoing objects, magnifying or shrinking other components, etc. All of these can be subclassed and customised, of course.Drop-shadows are used on Juce top-level windows (where possible and where the OS doesn't already do this itself). The JucerThe Jucer is Juce's UI component builder application. It comes along as part of the Juce source tree.Allows Juce components to be designed visually, adding from a palette of standard or custom Juce components.Generates ready-to-compile c++ code, with embedded metadata so that the same code can be reloaded and edited again later.Allows graphics to be edited as well as sub-components - polygons, shapes and images can be added, with various types of gradient and brush fills applied to them.Jucer components can be embedded inside other Jucer components for WYSISYG editing of complex hierarchies.Custom component types help to create certain types of component - e.g. the Button editor lets you design the graphics for all the button's up/down/over states. GraphicsImage support for 24-bit RGB and 32-bit ARGB images.All graphics operations are sub-pixel accurate and anti-aliased. Drawing is platform-independent, and should be almost pixel-for-pixel the same on all platforms.Image file formats supported are JPEG, PNG and GIF. JPEG and PNGs can be saved as well as loaded.Image loading utilities make it easy to incorporate images in your app: an image cache can be used to store recently used images and avoid keeping multiple copies of the same one; images can be loaded from memory of from any kind of file stream, or just directly from a filename.Easy embedding of images into c++ code using either the Jucer or BinaryBuilder makes it simple to add resources in a platform-independent way.Geometric paths and shapes can be created and manipulated with the Path class.A set of geometric primitives include lines, rectangles, points, rectangular regions, affine transforms, and more.Fonts are handled in a platform-independent manner, being rendered internally in Juce, and can be turned into paths for manipulation using affine transforms or other geometric operations.Gradient fills can be linear and radial, with any number of intermediate coloursImage brushes allow shapes to be filled with tiled patterns.A set of "drawable" classes allow graphs of drawable elements (e.g. paths, text, images) to be built up and drawn as a unit.Importer for simple SVG files, which converts them into juce Drawable objects ready for further manipulation or rendering. AudioAudio driver classes provide an abstract audio device layer, which transparently supports ASIO, DirectSound, CoreAudio and ALSA devices.Audio device manager class makes it simple to load/save a user's audio device settings between sessions, or to choose an appropriate default device for the system.Ready-made UI components for letting the user select their audio and midi device settings.A set of audio stream classes allow audio graphs to be constructed and played - types of audio filter include wave file readers, sample-rate converters, mixers, and tone generators.A set of audio file format readers and writers include support for WAV, AIFF, Flac and Ogg-VorbisA Synthesiser class allows simple creation of polyphonic synthesisers, which can be easily driven by midi input using the midi classes.On Mac and PC, a cross-platform Audio CD reader allows CD audio to be extracted as easily as reading any other audio file.The Juce Audio Plugin toolkit allows a single audio plugin class to be compiled for a variety of plugin formats - currently it supports VST (PC, Mac and Linux), AudioUnit (Mac), and RTAS (PC and Mac).MidiMidi input/output support on Mac and PCMidi message wrapper classes make it easy to manipulate midi using a high-level programming interfaceMidi buffer classes for efficient collating and editing of midi streamsMidi keyboard state objects will monitor a midi stream and provide information about the state of a virtual keyboardClasses for merging and re-timing midi input streams to synchronise with audio streams.Support for reading/writing standard midi format files.XMLA very fast, fully-integrated XML parser, supporting entity expansion, and external entities.XML structure classes make it easy to use XML objects as general-purpose data structures in your code, with quick methods for interpreting attributes as various numeric types other than strings.Because the XML parser is available throughout the library very cheaply, many other classes make use of it to provide quick and easy ways to use XML data - e.g. the URL class has a method to read and parse the contents of an internet URL.Application UtilitiesSimple cross-platform application startup/shutdown (although Juce can also be used to build plugins and DLLs with a custom entry/exit points).Classes for language-localisation of string constants, using a simple translation file format.Undo/redo support using an undo manager and undoable action classesBase classes for file-based document handling, to handle all the logic involved in loading/saving documents, knowing when they are altered, keeping track of recently opened files, etc.Versatile set of classes for managing a set of named application commands, which can be triggered automatically by menus, keystrokes or buttons. A powerful command-target structure gives flexible control over the dispatch of commands, and ready-made UI components allow sets of key-mappings to be edited and stored.Property file support makes it very simple to store named values in a settings file for persistance between sessions. All platform-specific details about where this file should be stored are handled automatically.A global logging object can be assigned, which is takes any output from Juce's internal logging as well as the application's log. A pre-made logger class is provided to write to a file, but custom ones can be added.NetworkingInput stream classes to handle downloads via HTTP and FTP.URL parsing.Cross-platform low-level sockets.An inter-process communication abstraction layer allows communication channels to be set up using either sockets or named pipes, to either a local or remote machine.CryptographyLarge prime number generatorRSA Key generator and codecBlowFish codecMD5 hashcode creation classMiscellaneousZip file format parser can parse and decompress file streams from zip files.Unique 128-bit i.d. generatorVarious platform-specific utilities, e.g. registry read/write functions on Windows; Pascal string and FSSpec converters on the Mac.High-accuracy performance counter class allows timing of code sections and averaging over multiple runs.
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