Hipe is a display server for native applications, from desktops to embedded devices.
A calculator, a PDF reader and a video player: three separate applications, side by side.
Native display servers give applications a surface to draw on, and leave layout, text and widgets to whichever toolkit each one uses. The web has the most capable layout and styling system there is, but desktop applications can only have it by bundling a whole browser.
Hipe brings the two together. Its display engine is built from WebKit with the browser taken out: no JavaScript, no network access and no page loading. A framing manager is an ordinary Hipe application that arranges the others on screen, so a complete desktop environment of your own design, or the whole interface of an embedded device, can be built entirely from Hipe instructions.