Overview

Monocle is an experimental implementation of the Glass windowing component of JavaFX. It's targeted at simple embedded systems that do not have an underlying window system. It is an ongoing effort.

Description of Monocle components

This is hard to read in the web interface, so you'll want to download the PDF if you are interested in Monocle's inner workings.

How to build Monocle

If you build OpenJFX for embedded Linux/ARM platforms from the 8u-dev repository then you get a functioning Monocle as well. You can also build it for Linux/x86 using the x86egl compile target (build with -PCOMPILE_TARGETS=x86egl on a system with GLESv2 and EGL development libraries installed). This builds the embedded stack for the Linux desktop; it is not the same as the GTK implementation of Glass. You cannot currently build any of the graphical implementations of Monocle for desktop windowing systems.

How to run Monocle

Since Monocle is an experimental implementation of Glass, it is not the default on any platform. To select it you run Java with the system property -Djavafx.platform=monocle on embedded platforms. This selects the Monocle implementation of Glass and sets other JavaFX options to match the embedded stack.

You can also select one of the specific back-ends of Monocle with the system property monocle.platform. Not all Monocle back-ends work with all Prism back-ends, so you might need to set prism.order as well.

For accelerated rendering with Monocle it is currently necessary to set -Dembedded=monocle

monocle.platform	prism.order options	Hardware on which this might work
`MX6`	es2 (default) or `sw`	Freescale i.MX6 SDP or similar boards. Needs accelerated Vivante graphics drivers for framebuffer; not all OS configurations have these.
`OMAP`	`es2` (default) or `sw`	BeagleBoard xM. Note that the es2 pipeline requires PowerVR graphics drivers, which are only available on soft float configurations of Linux on the BeagleBoard.
`OMAPX11`	`es2`	BeagleBoard (might require additional Prism changes)
`X11`	`es2`	BeagleBoard (might require additional Prism changes); Linux/x86 desktop
`Linux`	`sw`	Any Linux system with the sw renderer.
`Headless`	`sw`	Any system
`VNC`	`sw`	Any system

If you are running the desktop build of JavaFX or OpenJFX then your only monocle option is Headless. Desktop JavaFX does not support the javafx.platform system property, but you can select Monocle with:
-Dglass.platform=Monocle -Dmonocle.platform=Headless -Dprism.order=sw

Status

What's working:

Accelerated rendering on Freescale i.MX6, BeagleBoard xM and Raspberry Pi
Mouse, key and single-point/multi-point touch input with Linux device nodes
Synthesis of mouse events from touch events
Double-buffered software rendering to memory-mapped /dev/fb0
Cursors on OMAP3 and i.MX6
Touch coordinate transformations for screen calibration
Pluggable pipeline for touch event cleanup
Nested event loops
Robot input and capture
Most of HelloSanity is working on Freescale i.MX6 and BeagleBoard xM
Headless implementation running on embedded and desktop platforms, passing unit and system tests (base/graphics tests, system tests and Linux input tests)
VNC server mode with remote display and mouse input
Mouse input and accelerated rendering on X11

What's not working:

Full screen and minimized windows

What's not done yet:

Drag and drop
Android port
DirectFB port