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The nib.draw module provides declarative drawing commands for the Canvas view. Commands describe shapes, images, text, and paths that are rendered via Core Graphics on macOS with GPU acceleration.

All drawing is performed through command objects that are passed to canvas.draw(), canvas.append(), or provided as the commands parameter on the Canvas constructor. Commands are dataclasses and can be freely created, stored, and reused.

Sections

Section Description
Primitives Shape commands: Rect, Circle, Ellipse, Line, Arc, Path, Polygon, BezierPath, Points, Shadow, Fill, ColorFill.
Paint & Gradients Paint styling class, PaintStyle, StrokeCap, StrokeJoin enums, and gradient fills: LinearGradient, RadialGradient, SweepGradient.
Path Elements Typed path elements for BezierPath: MoveTo, LineTo, CubicTo, QuadraticTo, Close, ArcTo, Oval, SubPath.
Image & Text Image (raw bytes) and Text drawing commands with font and alignment support.

Quick example

import nib

def main(app: nib.App):
    canvas = nib.Canvas(width=400, height=300, background_color="#1e1e1e")
    canvas.draw([
        # Rounded rectangle with gradient fill
        nib.draw.Rect(
            x=20, y=20, width=160, height=100,
            fill=nib.draw.LinearGradient(
                start=(20, 20), end=(180, 120),
                colors=["#6366F1", "#EC4899"],
            ),
            corner_radius=12,
        ),
        # Circle with radial gradient
        nib.draw.Circle(
            cx=300, cy=80, radius=50,
            fill=nib.draw.RadialGradient(
                center=(300, 80), radius=50,
                colors=["#FBBF24", "#F97316"],
            ),
        ),
        # Connecting line
        nib.draw.Line(x1=180, y1=70, x2=250, y2=80, stroke="#ffffff", stroke_width=2),
        # Label
        nib.draw.Text("Dashboard", x=20, y=260, fill="#ffffff"),
    ])

    app.build(canvas)

nib.run(main)

Color values

All color parameters in draw commands accept either:

  • Hex strings: "#FF0000", "#ff0000", "FF0000"
  • nib.Color objects: nib.Color.RED, nib.Color(hex="#FF0000")

Gradient fills (LinearGradient, RadialGradient, SweepGradient) can be used in place of solid colors on any fill parameter.

Canvas Primitives