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Libui: GUI library in C

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Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#2

Post by ausjke »

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?

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#3

Post by striking »

Finally.

I'm hoping that a native UI toolkit that can be used via FFI from nearly any language might take a chunk out of the Web-as-application-delivery-platform mindset.

I don't blame anyone for making non-native apps with Electron and HTML5, because it's so difficult to make them work on every platform. But here's to hoping someone finally got it right, and that native applications can take back some ground.

Death to the battery-eaters and memory-fillers. Let the OS do the heavy lifting.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#4

Post by maheart »

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?

> What's the difference between libui and libsdl?

The way I understood it, libui is a widget toolkit (e.g. GTK, wxWidgets, Qt, etc) -- while SDL is low-level library to handle drawing, input (i.e. you'd need to implement your own widgets using the low-level primitives that are available to you).

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#5

Post by striking »

maheart wrote: post #4
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?

> What's the difference between libui and libsdl? The way I understood it, libui is a widget toolkit (e.g. GTK, wxWidgets, Qt, etc) -- while SDL is low-level library to handle drawing, input (i.e. you'd need to implement your own widgets using the low-level primitives that are available to you).

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 poking a different level (creating a new context and performing operations on it, via GDI+ or OpenGL or whatever). You trade one set of primitives for another.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#7

Post by karim »

striking wrote: post #3

Finally. I'm hoping that a native UI toolkit that can be used via FFI from nearly any language might take a chunk out of the Web-as-application-delivery-platform mindset. I don't blame anyone for making non-native apps with Electron and HTML5, because it's so difficult to make them work on every platform. But here's to hoping someone finally got it right, and that native applications can take back some ground. Death…

Well, plenty of people tried this approach (off the top of my head, wxWidgets, Tk (the TCL framework, still powering Python, Perl and Ruby GUIs), FLTK). Unfortunately, all those frameworks fail for the same reason: they're all 90% there but fall short on the small details.

Still, let's hope that libui does great --- it's already quite a feat to have the basic window controls working the same on three different platforms.

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#8

Post by mhd »

striking wrote: post #3

Finally. I'm hoping that a native UI toolkit that can be used via FFI from nearly any language might take a chunk out of the Web-as-application-delivery-platform mindset. I don't blame anyone for making non-native apps with Electron and HTML5, because it's so difficult to make them work on every platform. But here's to hoping someone finally got it right, and that native applications can take back some ground. Death…

The OS probably won't do the heavy lifting for a text editor. Native text controls/widgets are sufficient for simple tasks (like this textarea I'm using right now), but for anything more complicated, editor authors usually have to implement their own stuff. And that quickly gets really complicated... (still not as bad as a full-blown HTML renderer/layout engine/scripting system -- usually).

Re: Libui: GUI library in C

#9

Post by admax88q »

striking wrote: post #5
maheart wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the difference between libui and libsdl? The way I understood it, libui is a widget toolkit (e.g. GTK, wxWidgets, Qt, etc) -- while SDL is low-level library to handle drawing, input (i.e. you'd need to implement your own widgets using the low-level primitives that are available to you).

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.

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