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Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

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Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#91

Post by deaddodo »

chrisdalke wrote: post #8

Related, check out raylib, the rendering/game engine made by the same author! I’ve used Raylib and raygui on a few RPi based projects and recommend it. It’s a really simple, intuitive way to get an OpenGL-based UI running. Good alternative to web-based UIs because it has similar simplicity but runs on devices with lower specs. I built this pinball machine with raylib: https://youtu.be/iiBn7FVzlcc

Raylib is great and one of my preferred libraries for writing emulators in. But I will say if you’re expecting something like imgui or nuklear with Raygui, it’s not nearly as advanced or usable.

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#92

Post by oreally »

infogulch wrote: post #40

There has been a recent explosion of immediate-mode GUIs recently, but I'm skeptical that an immediate-mode solution can cover our GUI needs now and into the future. High refresh rate screens are a reality so you only have 3-6ms to render each frame, as well as high resolution screens at 4k-8k. That's a lot of pixels to push with a CPU on every frame. As another comment points out we also need accessibility. I would…

God the notion that declarative design will somehow fix everything and is the end all be all needs to go away. As people grow more experienced with programming they want more control over the flow of their program, so they can focus on fixing the bugs instead of playing the abstraction game to fix the (internal) bugs, if they can at all.

> Are immediate-mode GUIs up to the task?

Enough for companies like Unity/UE4 to sponsor the github projects.

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#93

Post by cyber_kinetist »

avodonosov wrote: post #85
synergy20 wrote: post #19

I have seen quite often 'immediate mode gui' on HN and elsewhere these days,I rarely do GUI myself, where are these im-gui's use cases? gaming only? or some embedded boards with limited resources can benefit to draw some pixels on a small LCD for a simple GUI(even that people are more likely use some light-weight x11 like libraries instead of im-gui library)? Other than game-development why is im-gui better than thos…

The immediate mode gui is largely a myth, IMHO. The concept of gui fully controlled by program data works well for interfaces consisting of a single button. As soon as we have two buttons, each button has a position, and the positions is the data of the gui itself (retained data), not of the program. Imagine a multi-tab interface - which tab is currently active and has its controls drawn is the property of the gui (r…

All of these functionalities that you have described can b e easily implemented in an immediate-mode UI framework, and in my opinion much easily than retained-mode UI frameworks. (I know this because I have used Dear IMGUI extensively, and have done almost all of the things you’ve said).

I think you’re arguing with some fundamental “philosophical” stance on what data should be owned by the user and what data should be owned by the GUI. But I feel that pragmatically immediate-mode GUIs are the most efficient at creating complex interfaces (like the ones you have described). The parts where IMGUi are lacking is in complex flexbox layouting, theming, and animations, which isn’t required in editor-like applications for professionals but might matter with end-user applications.

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#94

Post by noduerme »

chrisdalke wrote: post #8

Related, check out raylib, the rendering/game engine made by the same author! I’ve used Raylib and raygui on a few RPi based projects and recommend it. It’s a really simple, intuitive way to get an OpenGL-based UI running. Good alternative to web-based UIs because it has similar simplicity but runs on devices with lower specs. I built this pinball machine with raylib: https://youtu.be/iiBn7FVzlcc

That's just super cool. I love what you did with the scoreboard!

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#95

Post by 999900000999 »

setr wrote: post #81
999900000999 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you have a really complex UI. Would you really define your UI in code over XML or HTML

Yes. The more complex and more dynamic the UI, the worse the separation gets. The worst of it being when you’re writing code to generate your XML/HTML, and probably introducing a third “templating” language to continue the pretense that HTML/XML is not just standard data structures defined in a different syntax. The purpose of XML/HTML is to make your GUI specification independent of the programming language itself,…

So now I'm assuming, you're approach would be to just have classes for your custom UI elements.

It might just be a Unity thing, but up until they released their XML UI tools, I could not build a decent UI for the life of me. Basic things like getting buttons to appear where I want them to are very hard without XML

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#96

Post by lostdog »

schaefer wrote: post #46
synergy20 wrote: post #19

I have seen quite often 'immediate mode gui' on HN and elsewhere these days,I rarely do GUI myself, where are these im-gui's use cases? gaming only? or some embedded boards with limited resources can benefit to draw some pixels on a small LCD for a simple GUI(even that people are more likely use some light-weight x11 like libraries instead of im-gui library)? Other than game-development why is im-gui better than thos…

Immediate mode guis let you structure your code differently than traditional libraries. (gtk, etc.) It’s can be such a fast and light way to work. Get this thing done. And move on to the next thing. To me it’s just a valuable addition to our toolbox and our quest to use the right tool for the right job.

Yeah, but isn't there a CPU cost to having to run through your code on every frame?

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#97

Post by deckarep »

deaddodo wrote: post #91
chrisdalke wrote: post #8

Related, check out raylib, the rendering/game engine made by the same author! I’ve used Raylib and raygui on a few RPi based projects and recommend it. It’s a really simple, intuitive way to get an OpenGL-based UI running. Good alternative to web-based UIs because it has similar simplicity but runs on devices with lower specs. I built this pinball machine with raylib: https://youtu.be/iiBn7FVzlcc

Raylib is great and one of my preferred libraries for writing emulators in. But I will say if you’re expecting something like imgui or nuklear with Raygui, it’s not nearly as advanced or usable.

Curious what makes Raylib good for emulators? I’m genuinely interested in this.

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#98

Post by pjmlp »

schaefer wrote: post #46
synergy20 wrote: post #19

I have seen quite often 'immediate mode gui' on HN and elsewhere these days,I rarely do GUI myself, where are these im-gui's use cases? gaming only? or some embedded boards with limited resources can benefit to draw some pixels on a small LCD for a simple GUI(even that people are more likely use some light-weight x11 like libraries instead of im-gui library)? Other than game-development why is im-gui better than thos…

Immediate mode guis let you structure your code differently than traditional libraries. (gtk, etc.) It’s can be such a fast and light way to work. Get this thing done. And move on to the next thing. To me it’s just a valuable addition to our toolbox and our quest to use the right tool for the right job.

Retained UIs can be faster, because they only run the code related to the widget tree that is actually needed.

It is like in games, everyone ends up implementing their own scene graph, while asserting they don't need the one offered by retained mode APIs.

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#99

Post by gmueckl »

Adverblessly wrote: post #69
synergy20 wrote: post #19

I have seen quite often 'immediate mode gui' on HN and elsewhere these days,I rarely do GUI myself, where are these im-gui's use cases? gaming only? or some embedded boards with limited resources can benefit to draw some pixels on a small LCD for a simple GUI(even that people are more likely use some light-weight x11 like libraries instead of im-gui library)? Other than game-development why is im-gui better than thos…

IMO The main benefit of immediate mode GUI is that (unlike "normal widget kits"), the data required to "drive" the widgets is not actually owned by the widgets themselves, making widgets controlled directly by the "program's" data. You make some sort of change to the program's data and it is immediately reflected on the screen. This is as opposed to the "normal widget kits" where you need some "glue" to reflect those…

The unfortute truth to these toolkits is that they need to keep a ton of shadow state internally and diff that to the data coming in with each new frame. The most trivial example would be a button. The user redeclares this button each frame as if it was new, but the UI must unify that to a single persistent button instance to get the stateful button behavior right. Every interactive control needs similar logic. In essence you trade tailor-made, performant UI update code with an implicit, complicated and expensive semi-"transparent" generic update logic. It works for simple UI patterns with not too much data in the controls, but anything more heavy will r7n into problems.

Re: Raygui – A simple and easy-to-use immediate-mode GUI library

#100

Post by astrobe_ »

quotemstr wrote: post #30
synergy20 wrote: post #19

I have seen quite often 'immediate mode gui' on HN and elsewhere these days,I rarely do GUI myself, where are these im-gui's use cases? gaming only? or some embedded boards with limited resources can benefit to draw some pixels on a small LCD for a simple GUI(even that people are more likely use some light-weight x11 like libraries instead of im-gui library)? Other than game-development why is im-gui better than thos…

Many people at a certain point in their careers become infatuated with the idea of making a "small", "simple", and "opinionated" component free from legacy "BS". They have the skill to implement the core of that component but lack the wisdom and humility to understand that the "BS" complexity exists for good reasons, that their "small" component is subject to those reasons, and that they haven't actually found a fund…

Apparently you know the feeling when a competitor comes up and do 80% of what you're doing for half the cost (in dev time, memory weight, etc.). Hell, it still feels unfair even when it's a coworker who gets tasked with redoing (usually using some trendy new stuff) the system you've been maintaining for so long and know by heart, and that you've dreamed to rewrite for an equally long time.

You comfort yourself by saying they will run into the same problems that just wait their time in a dark corners of software or hardware. But they generally are in a much better position, with their smaller and simpler software, to deal with it than with old software.

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