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Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

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Re: Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

#41

Post by kelvie »

jpeeler wrote: post #25

Do any GUI frameworks support WASM? I've been looking for a way to run GUI applications remotely for a while, specifically on a wlroots compositor. Projects like this (maybe one day) and https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield are interesting since they essentially make access universally accessible.

egui [1] supports wasm.

I wrote a simple chord finder for learning to play guitar with it pretty quickly [2], and would use it again to solve a problem like this, though I'm told immediate mode UI frameworks aren't good for things other than quick prototypes, or in my case, scratching a quick itch.

[1] https://www.egui.rs/

[2] https://kelvie.github.io/chord-finder/

Re: Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

#42

Post by harrychin2 »

ronsor wrote: post #11
actionfromafar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newt: My mommy always said there were no monsters, no real ones, but there are. Ripley: Yes, there are, aren't there? Newt: Why do they tell little kids that? Ripley: Most of the time it's true. --- But yes, I do believe this has a strong, serverless future.

Downloading a 50MB WASM blob to run an emulator to boot a Linux kernel and then start an HTTP server to handle a single request is utter madness, which is probably why this will become popular to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7AinOjDiNQ

Re: Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

#43

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

kelvie wrote: post #41
jpeeler wrote: post #25

Do any GUI frameworks support WASM? I've been looking for a way to run GUI applications remotely for a while, specifically on a wlroots compositor. Projects like this (maybe one day) and https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield are interesting since they essentially make access universally accessible.

egui [1] supports wasm. I wrote a simple chord finder for learning to play guitar with it pretty quickly [2], and would use it again to solve a problem like this, though I'm told immediate mode UI frameworks aren't good for things other than quick prototypes, or in my case, scratching a quick itch. [1] https://www.egui.rs/ [2] https://kelvie.github.io/chord-finder/

Immediate mode UI frameworks are not inherently less appropriate than any other framework. Curious what the source of that is.

Re: Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

#44

Post by tonygrue »

jpeeler wrote: post #25

Do any GUI frameworks support WASM? I've been looking for a way to run GUI applications remotely for a while, specifically on a wlroots compositor. Projects like this (maybe one day) and https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield are interesting since they essentially make access universally accessible.

I’ve used ImGui with success. I specially was also using webgpu so I used the glfw+webgpu backends. I had to fix a few issues in both halfs of the backend and there remain some little interaction bugs (mostly because browsers capture some keychords and mouse actions and you have to work around a number of them).

ImGui makes a specific design choice and isn’t amazingly documented. I don’t think it’s a good choice for larger scale apps. But good for tools or UIs in games, etc.

Accessibility is a nightmare with pretty much anything skipping browser layout of course.

Re: Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

#45

Post by nox101 »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #43
kelvie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

egui [1] supports wasm. I wrote a simple chord finder for learning to play guitar with it pretty quickly [2], and would use it again to solve a problem like this, though I'm told immediate mode UI frameworks aren't good for things other than quick prototypes, or in my case, scratching a quick itch. [1] https://www.egui.rs/ [2] https://kelvie.github.io/chord-finder/

Immediate mode UI frameworks are not inherently less appropriate than any other framework. Curious what the source of that is.

In my experience Immediate mode UI frameworks are almost always not very internationalization friendly (right to left text like Arabic, problematic IME support) and, they are almost always not very accessibility friendly. Also things like system context menus to offer features like translation, system level spelling correction with the user's custom dictionary, system password memorization and recall, word lookup, etc

it's not impossible. in fact at an API level, React is an immediate mode gui written on top of a retained mode gui. but it's that retained mode that's providing all the features above.

which immediate mode GUIs have you used that cover these features?

Re: Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

#46

Post by nox101 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #30
jpeeler wrote: post #25

Do any GUI frameworks support WASM? I've been looking for a way to run GUI applications remotely for a while, specifically on a wlroots compositor. Projects like this (maybe one day) and https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield are interesting since they essentially make access universally accessible.

Flutter is looking to do so, it was just waiting for WASM-GC support which has now shipped on Chrome. Rust is another good one as the other commenter stated. I personally use Flutter for the UI and Rust for the business logic, using libraries like flutter_rust_bridge and rinf as FFI between the two.

I'm curious how flutter apps will do on visionOS. I suspect apps using native widgets will be great because the OS can change to UX for the app. Flutter apps on the other hand may all have to be re-shipped since they're doing it by hand.

Re: Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

#48

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

nox101 wrote: post #45
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immediate mode UI frameworks are not inherently less appropriate than any other framework. Curious what the source of that is.

In my experience Immediate mode UI frameworks are almost always not very internationalization friendly (right to left text like Arabic, problematic IME support) and, they are almost always not very accessibility friendly. Also things like system context menus to offer features like translation, system level spelling correction with the user's custom dictionary, system password memorization and recall, word lookup, et…

If the issue is that implementations are feature lacking, that's a different story. The world is littered with half baked frameworks. Hell, I've used plenty of retained mode frameworks that lack all of those things too.

My concern was moreso that there is nothing inherent to immediate mode that prevents all of those things. Someone just has to build it.

RTL tends to be more of a layout problem and has little to do with UIs. Most of my experience with immediate mode UI frameworks is in proprietary applications. I will say that we had no issues with localization and we integrated well with screen readers though none of this was in a platform independent manner. And that's usually the root of all of these issues.

Re: Container2wasm: Convert Containers to WASM Blobs

#50

Post by nox101 »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #48
nox101 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience Immediate mode UI frameworks are almost always not very internationalization friendly (right to left text like Arabic, problematic IME support) and, they are almost always not very accessibility friendly. Also things like system context menus to offer features like translation, system level spelling correction with the user's custom dictionary, system password memorization and recall, word lookup, et…

If the issue is that implementations are feature lacking, that's a different story. The world is littered with half baked frameworks. Hell, I've used plenty of retained mode frameworks that lack all of those things too. My concern was moreso that there is nothing inherent to immediate mode that prevents all of those things. Someone just has to build it. RTL tends to be more of a layout problem and has little to do wi…

I disagree that "someone just has to build it."

For example, when iOS shipped it did not have spell checking, word lookup, translation, password insertion, etc built in as context menus on text. When those features were added by the OS, every app using the native widgets got those features for free with no work on their part.

Apps that rolled their own though, had to re-release their app. If they don't have time or their app is abandoned then their users suffer.

This is arguably one of the reasons flash was killed off. It was designed to render to a rectangle of pixels and it assumed a mouse and keyboard. Then smartphones appeared and no one was going to go back and fix millions of flash pages.

Current apps doing their own thing will have the same problem with the next UI change (maybe vision Pro for example).

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