Libui: a portable GUI library for C • Hacker News Board

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#121

Post by mort96 » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

FraKtus wrote: post #90

saagarjha wrote: post #36

A lot of the comments have mentioned the lack of documentation this project has, and then they've received replies of the form "you should submit a pull request, the author doesn't owe you anything". Here's my take on it: I don't owe the author anything either. But if I'm considering which project to use, I'd probably choose the one with documentation, since it signals better goals and higher code quality. It's absur…

I work for many years with FFMpeg that has no documentation and no code sample, and it's okay for me. I prefer that the developers keep their time optimizing the code rather than writing documentation that needs to be maintained and become a problem when not in sync. My state of mind is that if it's open source then just read the code.

FFmpeg's C API has pretty good documentation: https://www.ffmpeg.org/doxygen/4.0/

The C API documentation includes a ton of example code: https://ffmpeg.org/doxygen/4.0/dir_687bdf86e8e626c2168c3a2d1...

In addition to having both a man page and a --help option, The FFmpeg CLI tool has very thorough documentation: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html

I don't understand how FFmpeg could in any way be considered to have no documentation and no code samples.

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#122

Post by detaro » Sun, May 20, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #113

detaro wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, C doesn't have namespaces as a language feature. Guess why all the function names start with ui .

But ui is a super common prefix. I've seen it used for user-interface variable and function names and also in Microsoft-world in projects that abuse Hungarian notation (unsigned int). Clearly it must not be a problem, I just don't understand how people work around it.

Yeah, only ui might not be a great prefix. It is a problem when names clash, and annoying to work around. Either you rename one of them, or you can wrap one library in a library of your own that changes the names.

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#123

Post by chapium » Sun, May 20, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #36

A lot of the comments have mentioned the lack of documentation this project has, and then they've received replies of the form "you should submit a pull request, the author doesn't owe you anything". Here's my take on it: I don't owe the author anything either. But if I'm considering which project to use, I'd probably choose the one with documentation, since it signals better goals and higher code quality. It's absur…

I think it breaks down to people skills. There is one group of people looking to use the lib for a project and another group that would be interested in contributing. Saying make a contribution to people not in the latter group is a bit rude. A better response would be to thank them for their feedback and mention contributors are welcome from those that are willing.

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#124

Post by boomlinde » Sun, May 20, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #36

A lot of the comments have mentioned the lack of documentation this project has, and then they've received replies of the form "you should submit a pull request, the author doesn't owe you anything". Here's my take on it: I don't owe the author anything either. But if I'm considering which project to use, I'd probably choose the one with documentation, since it signals better goals and higher code quality. It's absur…

> It's absurd to think that I should just pick up a random project and be obligated to make it better, and that I should be called out for giving advice on how I think a project can be improved.

You have no obligation to contribute to the project, but if you think it is lacking in some respects, making your own contribution is the most obvious way forward. So you give some constructive criticism, and the response is a suggestion for a way to address it. No one is telling you that you are obligated to contribute, and no one is calling you out. You want work done and you aren't compensating anyone for doing it, so the only way the work will ever be made is if some actual contributors' interests happen to align with yours, if you become a contributor yourself or if someone is willing to work for you without compensation.

As it stands with this library, there is an open master issue to improve the documentation. The author has acknowledged the problem and is accepting pull requests to improve it. The general advice to improve the documentation is at this point is not adding any information to the contributors of the project, because now it's only a matter of actually documenting the issues in the github ticket system and for people to put in the work. The suggestion to make a contribution yourself makes even more sense given this context.

> I shouldn't be forced to make a contribution to a project if I just don't think it's doing everything right.

You use the words "obligation" and "force" very loosely throughout your post. It's not adding to your point that you blatantly misrepresent the suggestion to contribute the work that you want to see put into an open source project as some sort of coercion or shaming.

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#125

Post by ungzd » Sun, May 20, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #36

A lot of the comments have mentioned the lack of documentation this project has, and then they've received replies of the form "you should submit a pull request, the author doesn't owe you anything". Here's my take on it: I don't owe the author anything either. But if I'm considering which project to use, I'd probably choose the one with documentation, since it signals better goals and higher code quality. It's absur…

It's hard to "just send pull request" with such core and large aspect as documentation. You can work on your own and submit bug fixes, improvements, more examples and clarification for existing docs, but making documentation from scratch requires communicating and planning together with project authors. And you should know the project very well to write docs, at level of core developers.

One of the ways it can be done is to start independent documentation effort, without even considering to merge it to project repository. Then, having these "draft" docs, it will be easier to make "official" documentation. Even blog posts "how to get started with libui" can be useful. This project looks very promising, like WXWidgets, but in C and not C++, for this reason it has lots of language bindings already.

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#126

Post by boomlinde » Sun, May 20, 2018, 3:37 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #97

saagarjha wrote: post #36

A lot of the comments have mentioned the lack of documentation this project has, and then they've received replies of the form "you should submit a pull request, the author doesn't owe you anything". Here's my take on it: I don't owe the author anything either. But if I'm considering which project to use, I'd probably choose the one with documentation, since it signals better goals and higher code quality. It's absur…

I completely agree. Besides, how can you submit a pull request for documentation when there’s no documentation for you to understand the code with? I say that as someone who spent a week trying to figure out a project recently, including reading the source code to figure out how it worked, submitted a pull request to improve some of the code and wrote a beginner getting started tutorial. That is, I have went through…

> Besides, how can you submit a pull request for documentation when there’s no documentation for you to understand the code with?

By reading the code? You're posing it as some kind of impossible paradox, but with the full source code available you have a pretty readable specification of how it works.

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#127

Post by boomlinde » Sun, May 20, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

chapium wrote: post #123

saagarjha wrote: post #36

A lot of the comments have mentioned the lack of documentation this project has, and then they've received replies of the form "you should submit a pull request, the author doesn't owe you anything". Here's my take on it: I don't owe the author anything either. But if I'm considering which project to use, I'd probably choose the one with documentation, since it signals better goals and higher code quality. It's absur…

I think it breaks down to people skills. There is one group of people looking to use the lib for a project and another group that would be interested in contributing. Saying make a contribution to people not in the latter group is a bit rude. A better response would be to thank them for their feedback and mention contributors are welcome from those that are willing.

> Saying make a contribution to people not in the latter group is a bit rude. A better response would be to thank them for their feedback and mention contributors are welcome from those that are willing.

I think that it's better to be clear about it. I'd find it rude if someone said "thanks for your feedback" without intending to seriously evaluate or address it. If submitting pull requests is the best way to get work done in a project, its maintainers should be clear about it.

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#128

Post by masukomi » Sun, May 20, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #116

saagarjha wrote: post #36

A lot of the comments have mentioned the lack of documentation this project has, and then they've received replies of the form "you should submit a pull request, the author doesn't owe you anything". Here's my take on it: I don't owe the author anything either. But if I'm considering which project to use, I'd probably choose the one with documentation, since it signals better goals and higher code quality. It's absur…

Decisions are made by those who show up. I agree with your point about reading the signals of which projects are probably the best. But with great power comes great responsibility. It's entirely possible YOU are the person who makes this project great, just by the Butterfly Effect of getting the documentation good enough that the next person who comes along will be willing to choose this and push a little harder, and…

> But if you show up, you get to make decisions.

That's not true with documentation. the decision has already been made. if you show up later and write the docs then you're just hoping you interpreted the decision correctly and aren't misleading people.

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#129

Post by dkersten » Sun, May 20, 2018, 4:49 PM UTC

boomlinde wrote: post #126

dkersten wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Besides, how can you submit a pull request for documentation when there’s no documentation for you to understand the code with? I say that as someone who spent a week trying to figure out a project recently, including reading the source code to figure out how it worked, submitted a pull request to improve some of the code and wrote a beginner getting started tutorial. That is, I have went through…

> Besides, how can you submit a pull request for documentation when there’s no documentation for you to understand the code with? By reading the code? You're posing it as some kind of impossible paradox, but with the full source code available you have a pretty readable specification of how it works.

It’s very hard to understand an unfamiliar codevase. The documentation doesn’t have to be super-fine grained, it just has to give a helping hand in understanding the high level design and use of the code. I can usually figure out api parameters, but that’s often not enough to use the code and certainly not enough to document it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m talking extremes here and I don’t expect a lot from someone’s passion project in terms of documentation effort, just a little helping hand if you want me to have a good experience (which is a prerequisite for me to care enough to contribute).

Re: Libui: a portable GUI library for C

#130

Post by jsd1982 » Sun, May 20, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #99

For those interested, it seems to use classical grids to align elements, and it is the only way to do it, since there is no mention on coordinates (if I read it thoroughly enough). void uiGridInsertAt(uiGrid *g, uiControl *c, uiControl *existing, uiAt at, int xspan, int yspan, int hexpand, uiAlign halign, int vexpand, uiAlign valign); The overall feeling is that it’s a [small] subset of GTK. I think they try to fill…

I think the point of this library is more to offer a native wrapping UI toolkit, including windows and Darwin, not necessarily a GTK subset, though you probably meant that in terms of a subset of components rather than implementation. This library has no renderer of its own and instead delegates that away.