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Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

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Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#21

Post by serial_dev »

The comparison sections are very confusing. It says you will compare your UI toolkit with, for example, Flutter and then there is no comparison there at all. I thought the site is broken on mobile, I tried different browsers, etc, because the comparison was just not there.

If you don't have any real content there because you don't want to start a flame war, you could try something like what the Flutter team did, they have an "onboarding guide" for XYZ developers that builds upon things you already learned in other frameworks and explains the key differences without coming off as hostile towards the other frameworks.

https://docs.flutter.dev/get-started/flutter-for/react-nativ...

I'm a Flutter developer by day and Rust enthusiast by night, and I'm looking for a "good enough" Flutter alternative that uses Rust.

Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#22

Post by Kelteseth »

madnirua wrote: post #13
Kelteseth wrote: post #4

Nice to see that Qt finally gets some competition! The pricing alone is a no-brainer. Now the only thing I'm missing from the demos is smooth scrolling :)

Disclaimer: I work for Slint Thanks. We have a lot of users who are migrating from Qt/QML to Slint. The smooth scrolling part -- is that for the wasm binary or for a native application?

Wasm in Firefox.

Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#23

Post by pzo »

serial_dev wrote: post #21

The comparison sections are very confusing. It says you will compare your UI toolkit with, for example, Flutter and then there is no comparison there at all. I thought the site is broken on mobile, I tried different browsers, etc, because the comparison was just not there. If you don't have any real content there because you don't want to start a flame war, you could try something like what the Flutter team did, they…

Not a Flutter Dev, but have you tried 'flutter_rust_bridge' [0]. Seems provide some interop between flutter and rust and looks like a popular and active project. I'm native mobile dev and just curious about this kind of interop myself. If it's seamless then looks like good balance to do mobile front-end in flutter and mobile backend in rust.

[0] https://github.com/fzyzcjy/flutter_rust_bridge

Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#24

Post by Kelteseth »

pzo wrote: post #12
Kelteseth wrote: post #4

Nice to see that Qt finally gets some competition! The pricing alone is a no-brainer. Now the only thing I'm missing from the demos is smooth scrolling :)

If you target desktop only probably Qt license (LGPL 3.0) is easy to use even in commercial projects. The problems comes if you want to target embedded, mobile platforms especially iOS or require some of their GPL modules (e.g. Charts, Data Visualization) Otherwise Qt is probsbly much more mature project and already has unofficial rust bindings

The current main problem is that Qt often releases new modules under GPL and commercial only licenses. For example, the new Qt GRPC implementation and then it is all or nothing. Qt commercial would force us to essentially buy two licenses because we have a second app that acts as a third party dll loading app. These dlls often crash and thus we moved them into a dedicated app we could simply restart, but Qt license would force you two buy two licenses only because they talk to each other. So, no thank you Qt we will stick with LGPL for now, and move to something else in the future. See my blog post "Current Issues With The Qt Project - From The Outside Looking In" [1].

[1] https://kelteseth.com/post/20-04-2023-current-issues-with-th...

Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#25

Post by davidhyde »

I just spent the last two weeks choosing an embedded ui framework and then building out a little demo to test out its capabilities. I settled on Slint and have been very impressed with the design of the domain specific language they came up with. It’s small, simple, powerful and easy to learn IMO. The vs code extension for real time gui feedback is amazing. I’ve used swift ui before and Slint is as much of a joy to use. This is a breath of fresh air compared to Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation that took me years to master.

My only concern is optimising for binary size. My little microcontroller only has a measly 1MB of flash storage and I’m already at 900kb on a 15 screen app with no icons or images. It would be nice to know what actually uses up all that space (as little as it is). Perhaps I need to use ui element virtualisation or something.

Edit: 1kb of flash -> 1MB of flash

Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#26

Post by meepmorp »

madnirua wrote: post #20
meepmorp wrote: post #19

Is it named after the band?

Just a nice co-incidence :) The toolkit was initially named SixtyFPS and was renamed to Slint last year -- https://slint.dev/blog/sixtyfps-becomes-slint The name comes from our design goals - Straightforward, Lightweight, Intuitive, Native Toolkit.

Well, I'm still gonna listen to Spiderland because you reminded me, so thanks for everything.

Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#27

Post by __forward__ »

madnirua wrote: post #16
fodkodrasz wrote: post #10

Looks nice, but actually the per/appliance pricing could be a bit clearer, I hate the Call Us type pricing pages, that is usually where I rather look for the competition... (Just had some hardship with finally getting an atrociously expensive quote after spending workdays of providing the needed inputs to a HW vendor)

Disclaimer: I work for Slint I suppose you are referring to the "Embedded Add-on per application" pricing? At least the non-commercial use is hopefully clear :) Yes, we need find a better way to show the pricing there since it's dependent on 2 variables - volume and type of embedded system. Maybe some sort of a online calculator?

What exactly is a 'user'? Literally one device running the application? In that case the pricing does seem a bit steep in a small business context.

Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#28

Post by nicce »

davidhyde wrote: post #25

I just spent the last two weeks choosing an embedded ui framework and then building out a little demo to test out its capabilities. I settled on Slint and have been very impressed with the design of the domain specific language they came up with. It’s small, simple, powerful and easy to learn IMO. The vs code extension for real time gui feedback is amazing. I’ve used swift ui before and Slint is as much of a joy to u…

Out of curiosity, 1kb of flash storage sounds quite tiny for a chip which is expected to provide GUI capabilities. Can you provide more information about the context?

Re: Show HN: Slint – A declarative UI toolkit for embedded and desktop

#30

Post by madnirua »

denysvitali wrote: post #29

Funny how they claim the toolkit is responsive, but then their website isn't. The "Used by" section overflows and basically breaks the whole website.

Probably because we are using HTML and CSS instead of Slint :)

Jokes aside .. which browser and device combo are you using.. We can adjust the css accordingly. Thanks.

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