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Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

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Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#11
post #4

> core set of platform agnostic native widgets This is confusing for me. I think such a framework is either 'platform agnostic' OR 'native'. Maybe the API is platform agnostic and the rendering is done natively?

That’s the case, yes – the UI runtime is Qt5 (which is rendered using low-level graphics APIs, so we class it as “native” – mostly in contrast to WebView-based UIs), and it’s the same API regardless of which platform you’re running on.

I saw Qt and immediately understood what you were trying to say, but for the record: That’s not what native means. Native means “uses the platform widgets and drawing/theming api” and Qt is not native: it actually draws its own widgets (for the most part with certain exceptions on certain platforms) that are drawn to mimic the system UI with subtle differences. If the system UI implementation suddenly changes (say with an OS release) the Qt UI wouldn’t magically change with it.

An example of native UI is libui or WxWidgets.

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#13
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any Win 10 fluent examples? Perhaps WinUI integation?

The parent project, NodeGUI, has some Windows screenshots and examples – I’m not familiar enough with Fluent or WinUI, but basically the UI runtime is Qt5, so integrating it into genuine Windows apps is out of scope (but may well be possible with the right expertise). I assume it would involve some kind of Qt-hosting view. I’m unsure whether Qt5 can host Windows UI components. Edit: NodeGUI here: https://github.com/n…

WinUI 3 improves the ability to embed fluent UI “xaml islands” in Win32 apps (like Qt processes) but it’s extremely convoluted and requires a lot of boilerplate (that I believe Qt could theoretically abstract over being at a high-enough level).

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the case, yes – the UI runtime is Qt5 (which is rendered using low-level graphics APIs, so we class it as “native” – mostly in contrast to WebView-based UIs), and it’s the same API regardless of which platform you’re running on.

I saw Qt and immediately understood what you were trying to say, but for the record: That’s not what native means. Native means “uses the platform widgets and drawing/theming api” and Qt is not native: it actually draws its own widgets (for the most part with certain exceptions on certain platforms) that are drawn to mimic the system UI with subtle differences. If the system UI implementation suddenly changes (say wi…

Is Qt considered native when you use KDE and not native when you use GNOME? Is Qt 3 considered not native when you use a KDE release that uses Qt 4 under the hood?

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#17

Maintainer here – Happy to answer any questions!

Off topic, any plan to make ot work with react native?

No plans, but what kind of integration would you have in mind?

I actually happen to be struggling to get React Native in the NativeScript runtime right now – running it in the Node.js runtime would be if anything even more challenging. But there are other ways to make the two work together.

Re: Show HN: Svelte NodeGUI, a lightweight Electron alternative with native UI

#18
post #16

So is it Chromium-based or not? "which makes it CPU- and memory-efficient when compared to other Chromium-based solutions like Electron"

Its UI runtime is Qt and its JS runtime is Node.js. No Chromium here :) it makes super-small, low-memory apps.
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