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Libui: GUI library in C

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Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#171

Post by c-smile »

infogulch wrote: post #169
c-smile wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Atom is slow and chromium a resource hog..." Check Sciter ( http://sciter.com ) then. It is single dll/so/dylib of 4-8mb without any external dependencies.

Licensing & Prices > Indie+ (Windows, OS X, Linux versions) > $1260 + yearly upgrade fee > We have no intention to cover full CSS1/CSS2 attibute map. Yeah that's not gonna work out for many projects.

1. there is a free version. 2. "We have no intention to cover full CSS1/CSS2 attibute map." is a very old statement. CSS 2.1 is implemented in full.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#172

Post by infogulch »

c-smile wrote: post #171
infogulch wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Licensing & Prices > Indie+ (Windows, OS X, Linux versions) > $1260 + yearly upgrade fee > We have no intention to cover full CSS1/CSS2 attibute map. Yeah that's not gonna work out for many projects.

1. there is a free version. 2. "We have no intention to cover full CSS1/CSS2 attibute map." is a very old statement. CSS 2.1 is implemented in full.

Thanks for refuting my first impressions. I may have to take a closer look even though it's closed-source.

"is a very old statement". I found this from the home page: Developers > Resources For ... > Web Programmers > CSS Property Map [0]. :)

Some questions. How does the render performance compare to modern browsers? TIScript: why?

[0]: http://sciter.com/docs/content/css/cssmap.html

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#173

Post by c-smile »

infogulch wrote: post #172
c-smile wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. there is a free version. 2. "We have no intention to cover full CSS1/CSS2 attibute map." is a very old statement. CSS 2.1 is implemented in full.

Thanks for refuting my first impressions. I may have to take a closer look even though it's closed-source. "is a very old statement". I found this from the home page: Developers > Resources For ... > Web Programmers > CSS Property Map [0]. :) Some questions. How does the render performance compare to modern browsers? TIScript: why? [0]: http://sciter.com/docs/content/css/cssmap.html

1. Render performance.

On Windows Sciter uses Direct2D that is native H/W accelerated graphics rendering layer. Yet it allows to render UI directly into DirectX surface : http://sciter.com/sciter-and-directx/

2. Why TIScript ?

Check "10 years road to Sciter" article: https://sciter.com/2014/07/

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#174

Post by comex »

pcwalton wrote: post #148
comex wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me, because I don't want any of: - huge binaries (or dependencies) - slow compiles - slow runtime - garbage collection - non-portability - C++ (I just don't like it) ...pretty much every popular language other than C falls into one or more of the above. Yeah, I know I'm fussy.

It's odd to see you saying this, given your security focus. But I suppose implicitly you're referring to UI apps that don't expose remote attack surface. Anyhow, I used to be the same way (perhaps surprisingly given what I work on now), but I stopped once I realized that it just takes so long to do basic things in C compared to other languages. The downside of slow compilation, for example, pales in comparison to the…

> It's odd to see you saying this, given your security focus. But I suppose implicitly you're referring to UI apps that don't expose remote attack surface.

I'm really quite conflicted here. I've written in the past that it can even be seen as irresponsible to write new security-sensitive programs in C/C++ when there are reasonable alternatives available, which is most of the time - and "security-sensitive" can include almost anything, given the right scenario. On the other hand, while I'm a big fan of Rust and use it for some personal projects, some things about it drive me crazy, while C's low-level nature appeals to me, so I also like to use C. I can justify this contradiction to myself easily enough, because I don't write all that much code that other people actually use, but that's something I'd like to change... :( In any case, I'm looking forward to quality-of-life improvements in Rust such as incremental compilation, which should tilt the balance more onto its side.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#175

Post by jscholes »

audidude wrote: post #103
random443 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal reason is that GTK 3+ lost his track in what constitutes a desktop widget set. It's also getting slower at each release, it keeps breaking visual consistency and basic features get removed or heavily deprecated in favor of a "dumbed down" approach. So if the non-technical users are actually migrating to dumb web-apps and couldn't care less, the technical crowd which demand power features and efficiency ar…

> It's also getting slower at each release, it keeps breaking visual consistency and basic features get removed or heavily deprecated in favor of a "dumbed down" approach. This is simply not true. We are closer to hitting 60 fps (or whatever your EDID actually presents) than ever before, and staying locked to that. The more complex of an interface you create, the harder that is, but that is no different today than ev…

> The "big buttons" are that size because people have all sorts of accessibility needs different from your own.

That's great, but GTK apps still don't work with screen readers, at all[1]. Big buttons don't cut it for making an application truly accessible.

[1]on platforms other than Linux, probably.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#176

Post by jscholes »

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…

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

Even though they do.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#177

Post by Razengan »

pcwalton wrote: post #145
Razengan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was recently thinking that operating systems should ditch their custom desktops in favor of a browser based UI. Here's the really funny thing though, if you just think about it for a second: Whether browsers become as powerful as operating systems, or operating systems become as convenient (for users and developers) as browsers, The end result will be exactly the same. Yep. Consider how we use browsers vs. native…

> Now obviously what browsers are missing is the UI responsiveness, efficient hardware performance, and OS integration. > It will take far less work to make the discoverability and acquisition of native apps as convenient as typing in a web address. I don't see that as the case at all. The UI libraries are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, I think CSS is better suited to hardware acceleration with modern GPUs tha…

Just compare using Facebook/Twitter/Reddit in a browser vs. their respective native apps on any device.

Other than the initial discovery/download delay for native apps, the web apps currently have no advantage over the native versions.

If people could instantly start using a native app just by typing say "Facebook" what reason would they have to go into their browser? Does anyone currently even do that? Go back to the website after they've installed the app?

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#178

Post by pcwalton »

Razengan wrote: post #177
pcwalton wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now obviously what browsers are missing is the UI responsiveness, efficient hardware performance, and OS integration. > It will take far less work to make the discoverability and acquisition of native apps as convenient as typing in a web address. I don't see that as the case at all. The UI libraries are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, I think CSS is better suited to hardware acceleration with modern GPUs tha…

Just compare using Facebook/Twitter/Reddit in a browser vs. their respective native apps on any device. Other than the initial discovery/download delay for native apps, the web apps currently have no advantage over the native versions. If people could instantly start using a native app just by typing say "Facebook" what reason would they have to go into their browser? Does anyone currently even do that? Go back to th…

My contention isn't that the browsers of today are superior to native apps. My contention is that a properly architected browser can make better use of modern hardware than native apps coded to legacy frameworks can.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#179

Post by avitex »

normallylurks wrote: post #154
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…

Don't normally comment online as I find it a lot of work (it's taken me about 5 hours to put together this pretty badly written response), but while there's a GTK dev here on topic I don't want to miss the opportunity. > There are way more types of impairments than visually impaired. Thankfully I have perfect eyesight, however I am very dyslexic. I have problems with spelling, but Google's search spell checker and vo…

That was a pleasure to read, and sheds a different shade of light on the matter of accessibility. Definitely is going to make me think twice when designing a webpage or application. Thanks for the writeup :)

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#180

Post by geon »

laurentoget wrote: post #22

These APIs are notoriously hard to get right and coherent, and releasing at such an early stage will make it hard to change anything when building up on this. That said I do not know of any cross platform library in C, so this does seem to fill a niche.

> releasing at such an early stage will make it hard to change anything when building up on this.

Why? Release early and get feedback. Backward compatibility isn't holy. And it's just an alpha. No one expects the api to be stable.

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