Libui: GUI library in C • Hacker News Board

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#31

Post by nurettin » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:11 AM UTC

I've done my share of startness-upness and web development on both asp.net and rails. After designing desktop user interfaces using various versions of delphi, using visual and non-visual components that are bound to databases is great ease. (optionally using an API layer to do server-side processing) the amount of complexity, speed and ease of use you can cram into a single form while remaining responsive and user-friendly compared to wizard-style web pages is much staggering. The ability to step between dynamically loaded libraries while debugging is such freedom.

Overall it was an easier and more productive development experience for me.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#32

Post by hoodoof » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:14 AM UTC

douche wrote: post #26

hoodoof wrote: post #11

Juce is another interesting UI lib https://www.juce.com/ Works with Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS and Android. Strangely, juce seems to have a revamped website that has no pictures or screenshots of the juce user interface and its widgets. Weird. Not sure how effective that marketing is...

I know, we always do this, but... I hate this website. I feel like I'm looking at a Medium post, stuff is popping around as I scroll, hero carousel, unclear Metro-style tiles that turn black and disappear the text on mouse-over, the works. Spent way too much time trying to figure out where the API docs and examples were hidden.

I have to say I agree. The old site was plain and simple and straightforward. I think a site can look great but doesn't need to be overly fancy. (says me, now I'll get back to implementing that fancy UI feature).

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#33

Post by apayan » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:16 AM UTC

andlabs (Pietro) is writing this library in C as a support for the Go ui library he's been building. https://github.com/andlabs/ui

However, as others have pointed out, this will be very useful for many other languages as well. I would love to see a Renaissance of native cross platform apps.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#34

Post by khedoros » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:23 AM UTC

hoodoof wrote: post #16

I was recently thinking that operating systems should ditch their custom desktops in favor of a browser based UI. Microsoft tried this idea out and it didn't work a few years back but it still seems to me that a browser based OS UI would be far more effective than things like Gnome and KDE and all that stuff. Edit: well I guess Google had the same idea long ago and called it ChromeOS - browser as OS interface.

> I was recently thinking that operating systems should ditch their custom desktops in favor of a browser based UI.

Why?

> it still seems to me that a browser based OS UI would be far more effective than things like Gnome and KDE and all that stuff.

How so? My needs haven't changed. I still need a UI that provides a searchable launch menu, some quick-launch buttons, window management, etc. Rendering a bunch of things through a browser doesn't do that for me any better than rendering those things through some C libraries.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#35

Post by atilaneves » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:39 AM UTC

striking wrote: post #3

Finally. I'm hoping that a native UI toolkit that can be used via FFI from nearly any language might take a chunk out of the Web-as-application-delivery-platform mindset. I don't blame anyone for making non-native apps with Electron and HTML5, because it's so difficult to make them work on every platform. But here's to hoping someone finally got it right, and that native applications can take back some ground. Death…

Having a C API for easy FFI doesn't imply a C implementation

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#36

Post by accatyyc » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:49 AM UTC

blub wrote: post #24

This is so funny. Yesterday there was another discussion on how C needs to be replaced due to security/corectness concerns (the K&R topic), today people are fascinated by a UI(!!!) library built in it. And they actually consider using this library.

C is simply the Correct Tool For the Job when writing cross-platform (native) UI's. It's simple, it's callable from almost any other language, and all OS GUI API's are already in C.

There has been a lot of negativity/arguments against C here lately, which in my opinion has been very exaggerated.

Seriously, how often do you guys write GUI apps that _also need to be secure_? An application isn't secure just because you write it in another language, there's a lot more work to it. If there is even such a thing as secure.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#37

Post by _pmf_ » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:53 AM UTC

> that uses the native GUI technologies of each platform it supports.

WPF is native on Windows, Win32/WinForms is also native on Windows. I'm assuming it uses Win32, although a third party FFI to WPF would be very, very nice.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#38

Post by sdx23 » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:55 AM UTC

register wrote: post #14

karim wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, plenty of people tried this approach (off the top of my head, wxWidgets, Tk (the TCL framework, still powering Python, Perl and Ruby GUIs), FLTK). Unfortunately, all those frameworks fail for the same reason: they're all 90% there but fall short on the small details. Still, let's hope that libui does great --- it's already quite a feat to have the basic window controls working the same on three different platfo…

This is not the same approach. Wxwidget is C++ which makes binding to other languages cumbersome. The same applies also to TK which is binded trough an embedded TCL interpreter.

Also TK doesn't offer native looks. Wx tries, though I'm not sure how good taking into account all platforms.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#39

Post by khedoros » Fri, May 20, 2016, 6:58 AM UTC

kodfodrasz wrote: post #10

Why would anyone write a GUI app in C? Almost every alternative is better for the job.

I'd consider it for a hobby project, or for adding a GUI to a C program without introducing many extra dependencies. Judging from the comments though, most of the people interested in this library aren't interested in writing a C GUI app at all, and I suspect that's your real answer.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#40

Post by geon » Fri, May 20, 2016, 7:07 AM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #29

laurentoget wrote: post #22

These APIs are notoriously hard to get right and coherent, and releasing at such an early stage will make it hard to change anything when building up on this. That said I do not know of any cross platform library in C, so this does seem to fill a niche.

Umm, Gtk?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but GTK isn't really native on anything but Gnome. Instead apps are just skinned to (mostly) look like each platform.