The title says it all. See more details in my blog post:
https://bkhome.org/news/202301/guiengin ... nitrd.html
I posted a thank you to the author of gui_engine:
https://github.com/AlxHnr/gui_engine/issues/3
It is a dead project, but the C code is so small, a quick look at it, reckon anyone with a smattering of C coding ability could take-on improving it.
Adding sdl-ttf would be good, though that requires freetype -- I wonder how much that will bump the size, statically-linked?