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Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

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Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#61

Post by danielvaughn »

Nice, I really enjoyed Flutter's approach to building UI, but I didn't really care for Dart all that much.

In theory shouldn't it be possible to create a programming language specifically for UI? Something that can be interfaced with from any major programming language. Kinda like protobuf with its IDL format, but instead of defining data, it's declaring user interfaces. Is that a crazy or stupid idea?

QT and XAML come to mind, but I believe QT is closed source (might be wrong about that), and XAML seems to have been dead in the water for a long time now (also might be wrong about that).

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#62

Post by bobajeff »

bubblebeard wrote: post #10

Commendable effort! I’m currently using Tauri for a project myself and was wondering if anyone has any pros/cons between the two?

From what I can tell. I've not used Tauri and it's been years since I've tried flutter.

Tauri currently has poor support for mobile and Linux (because of the state of WebkitGtk).

Flutter uses Dart which is not widely used for anything else. Harder to learn as there is no MDN, w3schools or standard spec for it. Also Flutter Web has issues due to it's use of Canvas over the DOM.

IMO, electron is still the way to go for cross platform apps.

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#63

Post by tensor »

amelius wrote: post #50
nu11ptr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React = one small piece of a very large required ecosystem (HTML + CSS + Javascript + NPM + React + Vite + ???) Flutter = a UI framework for mobile/desktop/web (Flutter + Dart) On top of the purpose built nature, nearly everything is a Widget, even layout/styling making it pretty easy to grok very quickly.

I personally prefer using many smaller components over using a large opinionated framework. But I'm not a big fan of React, so this could be better and worth a try.

It's less a "large opinionated framework" and more "fewer components overall. There is no HTML/CSS for example, it goes direct from Dart (equivalent to JS) to the Widget rendering system."

Dart has its own build tools and package system that work well. You can still pull in dart libraries as you need them. Dart is also a much better language than JS. I can't tell you how many days I've lost to react/JS build tooling issues. A single problem can easily eat an entire day. With flutter/dart I haven't had a single issue like that.

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#64

Post by duped »

nevi-me wrote: post #49
nu11ptr wrote: post #41

I use Flutter for my desktop UI and Rust for my backend. However, I chose to separate the two using gRPC instead of the bridge. This allows me to be agnostic of language on both sides and I suspect gives me a cleaner interface for mocking the backend from my frontend. It also makes it easy to place the UI and backend on different machines giving a true client/server architecture. The con is likely that the interface…

Do you run a gRPC service on the desktop where the UI runs, and connect the 2 via localhost?

If you do this please don't use localhost, the socket domain for IPC is AF_UNIX not AF_INET. Even Windows supports it.

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#65

Post by Zelphyr »

danielvaughn wrote: post #61

Nice, I really enjoyed Flutter's approach to building UI, but I didn't really care for Dart all that much. In theory shouldn't it be possible to create a programming language specifically for UI? Something that can be interfaced with from any major programming language. Kinda like protobuf with its IDL format, but instead of defining data, it's declaring user interfaces. Is that a crazy or stupid idea? QT and XAML co…

I’m curious what you don’t like about Dart? I thought I wouldn’t like it but I’ve found it surprisingly nice.

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#66

Post by mdhb »

synergy20 wrote: post #56
nu11ptr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React = one small piece of a very large required ecosystem (HTML + CSS + Javascript + NPM + React + Vite + ???) Flutter = a UI framework for mobile/desktop/web (Flutter + Dart) On top of the purpose built nature, nearly everything is a Widget, even layout/styling making it pretty easy to grok very quickly.

flutter does a so so job on desktop and it's web version is wasm based. the job market for dart flutter is a drop while react is the lake. react with electron, react native, react itself together are still the only ones production ready cross platform GUI with widest adoption

comments about job markets aside…

The first and the third paragraphs really haven’t been true for some time now.

Flutter is absolutely production ready as a cross platform GUI.

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#67

Post by samstave »

tmpfs wrote: post #5

I have been using this to build an app[0] for the last couple of years and I want to say that it has been a pleasure to use, there are some wrinkles but overall I have been very happy with the experience. Upgrading from v1 to v2 was not too difficult and v2 is a significant upgrade with lots of useful features, massively improved codegen experience and support for tokio async were the big gamechangers for me. Writing…

Just want to say, your site is very aesthetically pleasing. I hate blue websites (FB Blue) -- but the deep tones that SOS uses and contrasts are really appealing.

So is the app, subscribed.

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#68

Post by seabrookmx »

bmitc wrote: post #59
tmpfs wrote: post #5

I have been using this to build an app[0] for the last couple of years and I want to say that it has been a pleasure to use, there are some wrinkles but overall I have been very happy with the experience. Upgrading from v1 to v2 was not too difficult and v2 is a significant upgrade with lots of useful features, massively improved codegen experience and support for tokio async were the big gamechangers for me. Writing…

Flutter is not bad, but I hesitate diving into it based upon who controls it. Using a Google product feels like you're in constant threat of it just disappearing. It also still has all the remnants of mobile and fingers and not desktop and mouse. Support for improving this is non-existent in my experience.

Why conflate Google's customer facing products with their OSS technology contributions? It seems a weird comparison to make, as if their sales and marketing departments are the ones behind technology decisions.

Angular came out of Google and hasn't gone anywhere. Also GoLang.. even GWT was supported well past its prime and is now maintained by the community. What evidence is there that they abandon languages and frameworks?

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#69

Post by _bent »

danielvaughn wrote: post #61

Nice, I really enjoyed Flutter's approach to building UI, but I didn't really care for Dart all that much. In theory shouldn't it be possible to create a programming language specifically for UI? Something that can be interfaced with from any major programming language. Kinda like protobuf with its IDL format, but instead of defining data, it's declaring user interfaces. Is that a crazy or stupid idea? QT and XAML co…

you mean CSS?

Re: Show HN: Rust GUI Library via Flutter

#70

Post by nu11ptr »

duped wrote: post #64
nevi-me wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you run a gRPC service on the desktop where the UI runs, and connect the 2 via localhost?

If you do this please don't use localhost, the socket domain for IPC is AF_UNIX not AF_INET. Even Windows supports it.

Then I would need two different mechanisms. Local and remote are both satisfied by TCP sockets, so this is easier.
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