Yes, embedding a web browser is wasteful. But, it is EXTREMELY EASY. There's a reason why Github, Microsoft, Facebook, Adobe etc converged on this decision, an

Yes, embedding a web browser is wasteful. But, it is EXTREMELY EASY. There's a reason why Github, Microsoft, Facebook, Adobe etc converged on this decision, and it's not the bandwagon effect. Faced with the same task recently, I did my research, and it is indeed easy. Since I work on the JVM, my alternative was JavaFX. That didn't seem so bad, but it was much more work. If you look at say IntelliJ IDEA on some platforms, you'll see the text rendering is much uglier than on Atom. Regrettably, if you want to acquire users, that matters more than conservation of resources. I'm curious: have you ever tried interfacing with X11?