#640·clay

[Question] Possible approaches for localization, and first class support for runtime strings?

Author: proc0Created Jul 1, 2026Updated Jul 1, 2026

Hi all,

I'm loving Clay so far. One feature area I think will improve it as a UI library is more support for building strings. It works great with literals but that's usually not a great approach for production apps that need strings to change dynamically, like in the case for localization and changing language within a menu at runtime.

I know Clay_Strings can be built explicitly without the macro, but should there be a function like Clay_IntToString (which I guess is not explicitly exposed but works great for numbers)?

Also, related to this, what could be a good approach to initializing large sets of strings and swapping them at runtime? This could also be something that is handled by the library in a similar way fonts are. Allocate a large body of text, then split it by index with some helper function, and then use Clay_StringFromSlice or something like that?