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Libui: GUI library in C

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Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#121

Post by audidude »

Koromix wrote: post #119
audidude wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to what people seem to think, just because GTK+ compiles on Windows and OSX, doesn't mean we are trying to be a cross-platform toolkit. Many GTK+ developers consider GTK+ to be a platform in it's own right, not a portability layer.

I understand this, even though the constant breaking of GTK apps after each update annoys me to no end. But you might want to discuss updating https://www.gtk.org/ and other sites for that matter. Quoting the first lines of the home page: "GTK+, or the GIMP Toolkit, is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces".

If your platform is X11, Wayland, or Mir :)

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#122

Post by twotavol »

audidude wrote: post #118
twotavol wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "big buttons" are that size because people have all sorts of accessibility needs different from your own What accessibility needs are you targeting when you make the buttons and titlebars bigger? Why did this change drop suddenly? Was there a cry from the majority of your users that the widgets are too small to use with desktop inputs? Usually when there are accessibility issues you add options to deal with tha…

> Usually when there are accessibility issues you add options to deal with that, you don't change everything for a relatively tiny percentage of your user base. Would you make all your widgets have max contrast and double the font size by default because it improves accessibility for the visually impaired? There are way more types of impairments than visually impaired. We do have high contrast themes to help with a s…

Why are you lecturing me on visual impairment and disabilities? At no point did I claim you ignore that user base.

>Many of us may not particularly like touch screens, but an incredible number of computers that run Linux/BSD these days have touch screens. Things should work out of the box for these computers whether or not you want one.

Okay so after all that we get to the root of the issue. Instead of a good traditional desktop experience, you want to provide a mediocre desktop/touch hybrid experience. Instead of doing one thing well, the aim is to do multiple things poorly.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#123

Post by andlabs »

RustyRussell wrote: post #117

I couldn't see how to do other things in the event loop. Like, waiting for socket input. Did I miss it?

I haven't implemented that, and I'm not sure how I would add support for implementing that in a portable way without creating a complete networking abstraction interface either... In the meantime, you could do your socket work on a thread and use uiQueueMain() to send updates to the main thread.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#124

Post by distances »

Koromix wrote: post #119
audidude wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to what people seem to think, just because GTK+ compiles on Windows and OSX, doesn't mean we are trying to be a cross-platform toolkit. Many GTK+ developers consider GTK+ to be a platform in it's own right, not a portability layer.

I understand this, even though the constant breaking of GTK apps after each update annoys me to no end. But you might want to discuss updating https://www.gtk.org/ and other sites for that matter. Quoting the first lines of the home page: "GTK+, or the GIMP Toolkit, is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces".

Just a side note in case some representative happens to be around, the https link above delivers an invalid certificate.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#125

Post by andlabs »

jventura wrote: post #97
jventura wrote: post #59

This is a very good approach for the current times! As far as I understand from the source code, libui is a thin C wrapper that makes calls to each platform native ui framework. For instance, to create a window on OSX it calls the corresponding Cocoa function, for Linux the corresponding GTK function, etc. So, unlike Qt and GTK which are heavy cross-platform libraries because they can "draw" their own widgets themsel…

Had some troubles compiling on OSX Mavericks, but now that I've just tested it, it sure looks 100% native to me and perfectly integrates with the platform (file dialogs, osx font dialog, etc.) and much much better and lighter than Qt and other cross-platform tools I've been using so far. I'm definitely going to try to implement a python wrapper around this as it seems usable enough as it is now.. :)

What trouble?

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#126

Post by ausjke »

admax88q wrote: post #9
striking wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SDL isn't quite "lower-level"; it used to stand for Simple Directmedia Layer. It's a layer over some common drawing operations and the instantiation of a window. So you get a box you can draw in, and that's it. Then you're allowed to poke pixels until you get what you want. It's not that you're poking a lower level (which would be akin to directly blitting to the screen buffer like an old-timey OS), it's that you're…

It's absolutely lower-level. How do you think those widgets get drawn in the end? Via primitive operations like GDI+/OpenGL or just bit blits. GUI Widgets are a higher level of abstraction on top of pixels. SDL gives you pixels or an OpenGL context which gives you a slightly abstracted way of rendering pixels.

Then if libui supports libsdl as it does to gtk-3.0 it would be nice, as gtk-3.0 is still quite heavy for many embedded systems.

libui is based on C, and it is not really suited to compete with the c++/java full GUIs on Desktops, so supporting libsdl will certainly expand its usage.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#127

Post by jventura »

riq_ wrote: post #120
jventura wrote: post #59

This is a very good approach for the current times! As far as I understand from the source code, libui is a thin C wrapper that makes calls to each platform native ui framework. For instance, to create a window on OSX it calls the corresponding Cocoa function, for Linux the corresponding GTK function, etc. So, unlike Qt and GTK which are heavy cross-platform libraries because they can "draw" their own widgets themsel…

I think this is useful when you need simple dialogs. For example if you want to display a license agreement, or similar. It is overkill to bundle Qt libs to display simple dialogs. But if you want a complex and powerful UI toolkit (let's say you want to create an editor), you need a toolkit like Qt. You can't do that with just wrappers to native toolkits. You will only get the greatest common divisor.

I don't know how far one can go with this approach, but if this project works, I believe one could built on top of it to create more powerful UI toolkits. The advantage would be that, unlike things such as Qt and GTK which draw their own widgets on top of (I think) a OpenGL "canvas", this one uses the platform native UI widgets.. Tl-dr: this approach is lighter and sanner because it leaves the "drawing" burden to the OS itself..

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#128

Post by FreeFull »

douche wrote: post #20
ausjke wrote: post #2

Very interesting. Just built it on ubuntu 16.04 smoothly, the only dependency is gtk-3.0. What's the difference between libui and libsdl? The latter is also in C and supports many platforms. For large applications I may just use QT and for some embedded GUI I can use libsdl, what's the goal for libui?

SDL is pretty barebones, if you want to build a UI with it. You've got to build up all your widgets yourself from scratch - rendering & compositing, handling input events, etc. SDL really shines in simple cross-platform abstractions - window creation, basic rendering, input handling, threading, timers, basic audio, platform-agnostic file handling, etc. The older version (1.2) also had extensions for fonts, networking…

SDL 2 still has the _gfx, _image, _mixer, _net and _ttf extensions available. The only reason to still go with SDL 1.2 for anything new would be if you still want to target old, obscure platforms.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#129

Post by audidude »

twotavol wrote: post #122
audidude wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usually when there are accessibility issues you add options to deal with that, you don't change everything for a relatively tiny percentage of your user base. Would you make all your widgets have max contrast and double the font size by default because it improves accessibility for the visually impaired? There are way more types of impairments than visually impaired. We do have high contrast themes to help with a s…

Why are you lecturing me on visual impairment and disabilities? At no point did I claim you ignore that user base. >Many of us may not particularly like touch screens, but an incredible number of computers that run Linux/BSD these days have touch screens. Things should work out of the box for these computers whether or not you want one. Okay so after all that we get to the root of the issue. Instead of a good traditi…

I am trying to not come off as lecturing. My apologies if it was interpreted as such. You were making claims and I'm simply trying to provide examples of how other peoples computing experience might not match your own.

> Okay so after all that we get to the root of the issue. Instead of a good traditional desktop experience, you want to provide a mediocre desktop/touch hybrid experience. Instead of doing one thing well, the aim is to do multiple things poorly.

No need to get disparaging here. Clearly we don't want to provide a "mediocre" experience, nor do I think we do.

I also don't agree that supporting touch is some sort of hybrid experience these days. We aren't trying to be a mobile platform. We aren't trying to be a phone platform. Peoples traditional desktops (including many home workstations) have touch. These are real desktops bought by real people who get real work done.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#130

Post by Koromix »

audidude wrote: post #121
Koromix wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this, even though the constant breaking of GTK apps after each update annoys me to no end. But you might want to discuss updating https://www.gtk.org/ and other sites for that matter. Quoting the first lines of the home page: "GTK+, or the GIMP Toolkit, is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces".

If your platform is X11, Wayland, or Mir :)

And then you go to the Features page, with a box on the right clearly listing "GNU/Linux and Unix / Windows / Mac OS X" as supported plartforms :) With "Native look and feel" in the box just below.

I disagree with the current GTK direction, but it's not my project and I accept that. If the focus of the project has changed, update the website(s) and documentation.

Also the HTTPS stuff pointed out by distances.

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