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Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems [pdf]

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Re: Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems [pdf]

#131

Post by 0xCMP »

fsflover wrote: post #26
shmerl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its own compositing stack. SurfaceFlinger: https://source.android.com/devices/graphics/surfaceflinger-w... That's something I wish they'd replaced with Wayland these days for better affinity with the rest of Linux.

> That's something I wish they'd replaced with Wayland You might like GNU/Linux phones: Librem 5 and Pinephone.

It'd be nicer if the efforts contributed to a better, more robust Wayland given how much money is invested in Android devices by Google and others.

Re: Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems [pdf]

#132

Post by c-smile »

alex_reg wrote: post #114
c-smile wrote: post #111

Just in case, I've published yesterday demo build of Sciter.JS that also has binaries for Raspberry Pi (ARM32). See: https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-js-sdk (screenshots are there too) Some stats: Binary size : 3.7 Mb (RPI version) HTML: HTML5 level of markup language + "HTML Window" extensions, see: https://sciter.com/html-window/ CSS 2.1 + selected modules of CSS3, see: https://sciter.com/docs/content/css/cssmap.h…

Sadly the recent Kickstarter [1] failed. Does that mean open-sourcing Sciter is off the table for now? [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/c-smile/open-source-sci...

> Does that mean open-sourcing Sciter is off the table for now

Let's put it this way: I am still looking for options.

Re: Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems [pdf]

#135

Post by shmerl »

fsflover wrote: post #26
shmerl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its own compositing stack. SurfaceFlinger: https://source.android.com/devices/graphics/surfaceflinger-w... That's something I wish they'd replaced with Wayland these days for better affinity with the rest of Linux.

> That's something I wish they'd replaced with Wayland You might like GNU/Linux phones: Librem 5 and Pinephone.

Librem 5 is interesting. I wish Plasma Mobile project would accelerate though. And SailfishOS never open sourced their UI.

Re: Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems [pdf]

#136

Post by fmakunbound »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #109
kettro wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important distinction is Embedded and Real-time. Embedded is the all-encompassing tent, while Real-time is a subset thereof. Embedded includes things with GUIs, like fridges. We're not dealing with 128k of RAM. These can run basic GC'd apps just fine. Pauses really aren't any more of a concern than on desktop, or even less so.

>These can run basic GC'd apps just fine LOL, this explains why every embedded GUI I encounter in these "smart" devices is awfully sluggish and a pain to use, delivering 5fps at most. Thx for the clarification!

Don’t know why you’re getting voted down...

One only has to pick the same app, implemented natively on comparable iPhone and Android hardware to see that the underlying language runtime, that’s NOT garbage collected, is the one with the buttery-smooth UI. With JS “native” or web whatever, it’s even more pronounced on the SAME hardware.

Re: Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems [pdf]

#137

Post by c-smile »

izacus wrote: post #68

One of the main bonuses of Flutter is also its underlying design - it really just needs a Canvas to render to and not much else. This makes it easy to port to other platforms (even web) and it allows you to have a very lightweight embedded system running a builtin app. This makes debugging easier as well, since you can just write the app on desktop, test in emulators and then deploy. Our experience matches Sonys in t…

If Canvas means pixmap/bitmap (2D array of pixels) then unfortunately that's not enough in modern world.

On high-dpi monitors you must use GPU to offload rasterization of drawing primitives from CPU to GPU. Otherwise the only job your will do is drawing at 100% load - say "hi" to batteries and other apps on the desktop.

That's why I am supporting in Sciter as plain pixmap targets as GPU based ones: Direct2D/DirectX, Skia/OpenGL/Vulkan + the ones used by OS -CoreGraphics and Cairo.

Re: Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems [pdf]

#138

Post by scollet »

r_police wrote: post #38
singhrac wrote: post #27

I also, independently, started writing an app in Flutter for fun (no experience in mobile/desktop GUI work, several years since I've worked in front-end web). I can give a list of pros/cons that probably overlaps what you've heard: Pros: - The toolkit feels fairly mature and not too hard to parse. I think there's a lot of "this class works with defaults and breaks otherwise" feeling, though the core components are ro…

Futures are very similar to JS Promises. They even have similar APIs and can also be worked with the "async/await" of Flutter

I believe that's a dart feature just for comparison to JS instead of the framework.

Re: Graphical User Interface Using Flutter in Embedded Systems [pdf]

#140

Post by blub »

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #3

Great presentation. Also, really not surprising at all. Anyone that has tried getting a sample Flutter app running on a desktop will quickly find that it's shockingly easy and on almost all platforms will "just work" despite being in Alpha. The development experience in Flutter is great too. Anything that can help with that when developing for embedded systems is likely very tempting. I am curious why they went with…

It is both surprising and unsurprising...

Unsurprising because it's not the first time Sony bet on an unusual language (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1938652) and people on HN were similarly excited. Days later the initiative was put on hold and the domain doesn't even resolve today. I think it's safe to say that their initiative did not end up as a huge success.

Surprising because according to their own presentation they want to use an alpha version technology created by a company which is known to be cancelling projects on a whim and which is not really using said technology for anything important.

A decade later one things remains clear: you can count on HNers to jump on any obscure programming language and praise it to the skies.

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