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Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#221

Post by steaminghacker »

SXX wrote: post #173
doppioandante wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still haven't found a clear answer to that, but using the LGPL license could pose a problem, because you need to allow the user to recompile the application with his own version of Qt. On iOS shared libraries are not allowed on the store, so you should distribute the files for static linking... it becomes quite messy and sort of unclear from the legal point of view.

Even if it's wasn't clear before now it's pretty clear - you must buy commercial license if you want to be on App Store. There was Qt license change[1] in January 2016 and there is no longer LGPLv2.1 licensed version since Qt 5.7. Only option for commercial software currently is LGPLv3 and it's doesn't allow tivoization. [1] https://subsurface-divelog.org/2016/02/subsurface-mobile-for...

Hey thanks. I wasn't aware of the dylib appstore restriction. Is this still the case with iOS8 and if not, could a dynamic LGPL Qt app be put on the store. I hope they allow this going forward.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#222

Post by aphextron »

fitzwatermellow wrote: post #27

Just getting started on Electron myself. Used by Atom, Slack, Visual Studio... It's worth a look ;) Electron - Build Cross-Platform Desktop Apps With HTML, JS, CSS http://electron.atom.io/

Electron is ok for certain applications, but I'm really wary of this whole trend. It's leading to extremely buggy, resource intensive desktop applications.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#223

Post by rer »

aninteger wrote: post #209
rer wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's much harder to get right than it seems I'm not disputing this but I've yet to see a clear explanation why it's harder to get right than it seems. I want to understand, precisely, what makes this hard.

It's not necessarily hard but it is a ton of work and requires a lot of low level knowledge of the underlying window system. You need to have a very good understanding of the layer beneath you (xlib, Wayland, win32) and how fonts are rendered on the various systems you want to support. There's also various tradeoffs you need to make. Do you go with custom drawn widgets or use native ones? Native offers a shortcut if…

Maybe want I want is to always have access to the layer beneath (xlib, Wayland, win32). Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#224

Post by mherrmann »

infinite8s wrote: post #134
mherrmann wrote: post #59

For a file manager I'm developing [1], this question recently boiled down to Electron vs (Py)Qt. I chose (Py)Qt because Electron's startup speed is too slow. [1]: https://fman.io

How are you handling licensing? Are you using the commercial version of PyQt? I've been thinking of distributing some apps I've built but I don't want to make them GPL (I don't mind using MIT or BSD though).

I'm using the commercial license. It's really not that expensive.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#225

Post by yaur »

rer wrote: post #199
yaur wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you start to roll your own consider that there have been many attempts to do this already and they have all failed to varying degrees. The reason for this is that it's much harder to get right than it seems. QT is what I've used when a client is determined to go down this path, but if a web app doesn't make sense the best option is almost always to spend extra time making sure that most of your code is portabl…

> it's much harder to get right than it seems I'm not disputing this but I've yet to see a clear explanation why it's harder to get right than it seems. I want to understand, precisely, what makes this hard.

Setting aside that most windows client development should probably be done in WPF/C# these days...

low level differences:

There are differences between GDI and xlib. For instance GDI has a concept of a "combo box" at the API level and in X11 you need to either roll your own or use a higher level GUI toolkit. IIRC, Handling of the non-client area and window scrolling are different between platforms and handling of audio/video is completely different between platforms.

There are a LOT of features:

Power modes (e.g. suspend, hibernate, low battery), tooltips, the clipboard, drag and drop, maximize, and a bunch of subtly different "must have" features need to work between platforms and you need to know what all those features are. Accessibility should work and touch/gesture support is likely to become important over the next few years. At the point where you start cutting features to make it more manageable you have started down the road of making another crappy "lowest common denominator" GUI toolkit and you are better off just using QT.

User expectations are different between platforms:

This is mostly a lot of little details, like where the "close" button goes, what a "right click" does, menu layouts, standard icons, and which direction the window scrolls when you move the mouse wheel "up" but it adds up to an application not feeling right. You can see this taken to an extreme with any number of bad ports from console to PC.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#226

Post by witty_username »

networked wrote: post #136
witty_username wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tk is antiquated (no antialiasing [1]) and has a poor look on Linux. It lacks functionality in widgets such as embedding a progressbar in a tree/list (don't remember) widget, which Qt supports. Also, poor font rendering support. (doesn't render Devanagari and probably CJK scripts). It feels like a 10 year old tech which it is. (1) Maybe there is some option for it somewhere, but if so, having antialiasing disabled by…

Tk is 25-year-old tech, not 10. ;-) It has also maintained backwards compatibility since 1997 or so, which is a nice feature to have in many cases but comes at a price. For example, you have to know to use a "ttk::button", not a plain "button", to get the native (Windows, macOS) or a least the somewhat better-looking (*nix) widget. The result is that old Tk software still runs unchanged instead of forcing its maintai…

> As for antialiasing, what do you mean when you say it is disabled by default? Is that in a particular Linux distribution? A recent Tk release (post-Tcl 8.5) should render antialiased text unless you compile it with "--disable-xft" or your font is raster.

Sorry, I was thinking about antialiased drawings (canvas). Text was antialiased if I remember correctly.

IIRC Tk only has linear gradients, no fancy gradients that is needed to make your GUI look good.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#227

Post by witty_username »

networked wrote: post #213
rer wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment says Tk is limited https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381978 You and the GP say it's not. Is there anything Tk can't do? Also a question on fonts. Does Tk make it possible to use webfonts I see on websites?

>You and the GP say it's not. But I did not say that. In the reply to the comment you've linked you write that "this thread believes Tk is as good as QT". I am puzzled by this conclusion because I do not see any comparison to Qt at all. Certainly, I didn't want to suggest any with my comments. If you want to know my option on how Tk compares to Qt, I currently believe that, for the most part, they serve different use…

> I recommended Tk specifically for making a GUI quickly. It is good for prototyping and rapid iteration and has neat widgets like canvas and the text editor that help a lot with that. Tcl with Tk is expressive, so you can do a lot in under 1000 lines of code (toy example: [1]). The Tcl REPL helps more still, as does a great binary deployment story. After the prototype or MVP, once you understand what you want to do better, you may stay with Tk if you decide it suits your needs or switch to something else.

Actually, I would argue the opposite. I found it easy to create GUIs using Qt Designer and to use connect() to bind functionality together. (Albeit, this was with Python, it might be harder in C++).

> widgets like canvas and the text editor

Is there something particularly unique in Tk's canvas and text editor?

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#228

Post by tariqrauf »

api wrote: post #69
tariqrauf wrote: post #3

Depends on what you're after :) Electron or QT for cross-desktop apps, Angular & Ion framework for cross-mobile apps, React & React-native for cross-mobile apps

There are efforts to bring React Native to desktop but I don't think they are production ready yet.

you can get react on desktop with electron

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#229

Post by andlabs »

rer wrote: post #156
barrkel wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GTK+ is dreadful on Windows. I'd stay away. Personally I implement the UI in as thin a layer as can be architected and reimplement for every platform. It's the best way, and probably cheaper for most apps than trying to force some lowest common denominator library to express what you want in high fidelity.

Ok, no GTK+! (Could this be fixed with GLib?) I didn't understand this. When you say you implement the UI as a thin layer do you mean you wrap only the few controls you need?

libui only wraps around GTK+ on Unix systems. On Windows, it uses the native Windows API directly.

GLib is a utility library; it provides things like container types, filesystem access, networking utilities, threads, object-oriented programming with events and properties, and other similar functions in a platform-independent manner. GTK+ uses GLib. You can use GLib on its own as well. It won't solve the problem of GTK+ being clunky on Windows, though.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best library for making cross-platform UIs?

#230

Post by rer »

andlabs wrote: post #229
rer wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, no GTK+! (Could this be fixed with GLib?) I didn't understand this. When you say you implement the UI as a thin layer do you mean you wrap only the few controls you need?

libui only wraps around GTK+ on Unix systems. On Windows, it uses the native Windows API directly. GLib is a utility library; it provides things like container types, filesystem access, networking utilities, threads, object-oriented programming with events and properties, and other similar functions in a platform-independent manner. GTK+ uses GLib. You can use GLib on its own as well. It won't solve the problem of GT…

What I don't get is: which library lets you draw stuff on the screen. GLib or GTK+?

I thought that was GLib, and GTK+ was using GLib to implement controls.

Which library does one need to build their own controls?

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