Photon Micro GUI • Hacker News Board

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#31

Post by gigatexal » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

FraKtus wrote: post #8

From the author "Photon has its own HTML5 inspired canvas drawing engine using Cairo underneath". That means it should render nicely at any resolution, the author says, "resolution independent and allows for HDPI displays". But using Cairo means it should not have a good performance at high resolutions. I have yet to find a fork of Cairo GPU accelerated that supports all the API. So it may fit the bill if you are cod…

I knew the original dev of cairo. It’s amazing to see how it is being used in many different projects: a testament to his work all those years ago.

This GUI looks great, too. It’d be interesting to have python bindings to it.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#32

Post by joezydeco » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #23

FraKtus wrote: post #8

From the author "Photon has its own HTML5 inspired canvas drawing engine using Cairo underneath". That means it should render nicely at any resolution, the author says, "resolution independent and allows for HDPI displays". But using Cairo means it should not have a good performance at high resolutions. I have yet to find a fork of Cairo GPU accelerated that supports all the API. So it may fit the bill if you are cod…

Anyone using Skia?

I’ve always been curious why Google didn’t spin out Skia. Maybe because it lacks the UI primitives you really need to make it useful?

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#33

Post by diet_mtn_dew » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

hawski wrote: post #25

No mention of accessibility makes it not enough for more generic applications. That's my main pain point. I would love to have a modern alternative to wxWidgets - something in higher level language than C++. Something that would use GTK+ on GNOME, Qt on KDE, Cocoa on macOS, Cocoa Touch on iOS, Android APIs on Android. Android is the trickiest probably, because I would like it to run without NDK, so compiled down to A…

There is a Java version of Tcl called Jacl. I have no idea if it would work for your purposes.

https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Java+and+Tcl

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#34

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

Too many skeuomorphic elements.

He needs to take the controls people know and understand and replace them with cryptic methods that require new learning, and are hidden from view by default. Otherwise no one will take it seriously as a modern UI.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#35

Post by asark » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

torgoguys wrote: post #2

Name collision--QNX's gui was/is also named "Photon MicroGUI" and that is what I thought this post was going to be about: http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0/index.jsp?topic=%2F...

Can confirm. Came in expecting the other Photon MicroGUI ("now there's a name I've not heard in a long time"), was surprised/disappointed. Man QNX+Photon made for a nice GUI operating environment. Rivaled only by BeOS on my "GUI environments/systems I wish had made a bigger splash" scale.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#36

Post by octetta » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 8:14 PM UTC

asark wrote: post #35

torgoguys wrote: post #2

Name collision--QNX's gui was/is also named "Photon MicroGUI" and that is what I thought this post was going to be about: http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0/index.jsp?topic=%2F...

Can confirm. Came in expecting the other Photon MicroGUI ("now there's a name I've not heard in a long time"), was surprised/disappointed. Man QNX+Photon made for a nice GUI operating environment. Rivaled only by BeOS on my "GUI environments/systems I wish had made a bigger splash" scale.

Totally agree with you. While I've been away from QNX for a long time, I did enjoy this API and system design. When I saw it go EOL, I made an appeal for them to open source it. Never heard a peep.

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#37

Post by stabbles » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

Awesome, that looks like an attempt to replace QML by native C++. Would be great if there was a SwiftUI inspired C++ UI framework (well, of course C++ might not lend itself so well for the job, but I'm just very curious what it would look like if someone makes a real attempt).

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#38

Post by mankeysee » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 8:28 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #34

Too many skeuomorphic elements. He needs to take the controls people know and understand and replace them with cryptic methods that require new learning, and are hidden from view by default. Otherwise no one will take it seriously as a modern UI.

The mobile and web people are probably triggered at this ui lol

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#39

Post by zengid » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

IDK about y'all but the main page (https://www.cycfi.com/) this post is on has a bunch of interesting audio hardware/software posts. Pretty neat company!

Re: Photon Micro GUI

#40

Post by gurkendoktor » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #30

RussianCow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FFI = foreign function interface[0], a way to call functions written in one language (generally C) from another. By "FFI friendly" I think the parent meant that Photon Micro GUI isn't something you can easily use from languages other than C++. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_function_interface

Bummer. Higher level low footprint languages such as Nim and Crystal would benefit a lot from bindings for this GUI. Probably Lua too, but that's a different context and Lua already has Tekui and others.

You can still write Crystal wrappers for it, just not using FFI. This looks like it might be polished enough: https://github.com/Papierkorb/bindgen

The bigger issue is that Crystal really needs first-class Windows support before people will use it for GUIs...