5 ms·

If anybody out there is dismayed by the rise of Electron for UI, crap like this is why that came about.

by nupsigga 5y ago

hackermeows 5y ago
Are these two the only option ?
- j-james 5y ago
  Qt is another very popular toolkit, as long as you're not dead set on working in C.
  - MichaEiler 5y ago
    Qt would have been my first choice for a long time. Unfortunately the Qt Company has changed their pricing model a few years ago and charges way too much these days. (3950$ per developer and year for desktop and mobile applications. For embedded systems they don't even list public prices...). That said even the open source version is less interesting since one doesn't get official long term security and bug fix updates without continuously migrating to the newest releases.
- lordofgibbons 5y ago
  Flutter for desktop also exists, but it's not ready for production use yet. It's buggy and missing features, but usable. My prediction is that we should be able to build prod-ready native desktop apps with it within a year or so
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, FLTK are more or less your only choices for generic, long lived, cross-platform desktop GUI toolkits. I apologize for any that I've forgotten, except Tcl/Tk which is not seriously an option at this point in time :) There are some "promising new up and comers", including libUI. If you work in the audio software domain, JUCE is likely your go-to cross-platform toolkit.
  - wahern 5y ago
    I settled for Yue: https://github.com/yue/yue https://github.com/yue/yue It's been around for several years, though definitely doesn't have the developer or user base of other well-known frameworks. The deciding factor for me was that is has well maintained Lua bindings as part of the core project, alongside JavaScript (Node.js) and C++. I didn't have much luck with libui (crashes, missing features, etc), and various immediate mode alternatives just require too many dependencies and other work that made integration painful. Plus, Lua bindings for these were always stale. In fact, Lua binding quality is pretty poor all around, including GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, and FLTK.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  No. wxWidgets is cross-platform with GTK and Qt backends on Linux, and native platform widgets on macOS and Windows. QtQuick with QML is also pleasant, with a reactive programming model written in JavaScript. There's Kivy on Python. There are several IMGUI implementations, too. Some other lightweight Electron-like alternatives also exist.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
This is a false claim. The "rise" of Electron has occured primarily because it allows people to do desktop development using whatever it that they learned in the context of web-centric development. For some people, that's an excellent turn of events, for others, it is a horror show. Even if I was willing to grant that GTK and Qt etc. are "crap" (which I'm not, but ...), it's notable that there are essentially zero cross-platform alternatives that could be judged any less "crappy". Either you think that nobody smart enough has tried, or this is a much harder problem to solve to your liking than it first appears.
- analognoise 5y ago
  Lazarus/FreePascal makes all of these things look like trash. GTK, QT, and Electron. Native, cross platform, tiny binaries, JS transpiler in the works, Android and iOS support in the works. Destroys this...mess.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    as a RAD-like tool, Lazarus looks pretty good. But I'm the author of a substantial cross-platform creative/media application, and not only do we not use any RAD tools, I don't think we could. So if you "destroy this mess", I'm not sure how we could do what we do. Very few "creative" applications use stock toolkits and RAD tools.
    - analognoise 5y ago
      The RAD component is optional; you're free to code up your interface if you'd like.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Which from what I can tell would buy me essentially nothing over any other cross-platform GUI toolkit. I don't use Qt, but QML and its associated tools look to me at least as good as Lazarus.
  - 5y ago
donio 5y ago
I disagree. I am no GTK fanboy but if you actually look through the linked tutorial it's quite straightforward stuff and all you need to know is C. You can't get much simpler than some of the early examples except maybe in Tcl/Tk. If you look through an Electron tutorial it assumes familiarity with a whole bunch of web technologies and it's not any simpler. The reason Electron and the like are popular is because developers can take advantage of their pre-existing knowledge of these web technologies and have the option to reuse code between Electron and web projects.

If anybody out there is dismayed by the rise of Electron for UI, crap like this is why that came about.

hackermeows 5y ago

Are these two the only option ?

j-james 5y ago
Qt is another very popular toolkit, as long as you're not dead set on working in C.
- MichaEiler 5y ago
  Qt would have been my first choice for a long time. Unfortunately the Qt Company has changed their pricing model a few years ago and charges way too much these days. (3950$ per developer and year for desktop and mobile applications. For embedded systems they don't even list public prices...). That said even the open source version is less interesting since one doesn't get official long term security and bug fix updates without continuously migrating to the newest releases.
lordofgibbons 5y ago
Flutter for desktop also exists, but it's not ready for production use yet. It's buggy and missing features, but usable. My prediction is that we should be able to build prod-ready native desktop apps with it within a year or so
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, FLTK are more or less your only choices for generic, long lived, cross-platform desktop GUI toolkits. I apologize for any that I've forgotten, except Tcl/Tk which is not seriously an option at this point in time :) There are some "promising new up and comers", including libUI. If you work in the audio software domain, JUCE is likely your go-to cross-platform toolkit.
- wahern 5y ago
  I settled for Yue: https://github.com/yue/yue https://github.com/yue/yue It's been around for several years, though definitely doesn't have the developer or user base of other well-known frameworks. The deciding factor for me was that is has well maintained Lua bindings as part of the core project, alongside JavaScript (Node.js) and C++. I didn't have much luck with libui (crashes, missing features, etc), and various immediate mode alternatives just require too many dependencies and other work that made integration painful. Plus, Lua bindings for these were always stale. In fact, Lua binding quality is pretty poor all around, including GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, and FLTK.
heavyset_go 5y ago
No. wxWidgets is cross-platform with GTK and Qt backends on Linux, and native platform widgets on macOS and Windows. QtQuick with QML is also pleasant, with a reactive programming model written in JavaScript. There's Kivy on Python. There are several IMGUI implementations, too. Some other lightweight Electron-like alternatives also exist.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

This is a false claim. The "rise" of Electron has occured primarily because it allows people to do desktop development using whatever it that they learned in the context of web-centric development. For some people, that's an excellent turn of events, for others, it is a horror show. Even if I was willing to grant that GTK and Qt etc. are "crap" (which I'm not, but ...), it's notable that there are essentially zero cross-platform alternatives that could be judged any less "crappy". Either you think that nobody smart enough has tried, or this is a much harder problem to solve to your liking than it first appears.

analognoise 5y ago
Lazarus/FreePascal makes all of these things look like trash. GTK, QT, and Electron. Native, cross platform, tiny binaries, JS transpiler in the works, Android and iOS support in the works. Destroys this...mess.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  as a RAD-like tool, Lazarus looks pretty good. But I'm the author of a substantial cross-platform creative/media application, and not only do we not use any RAD tools, I don't think we could. So if you "destroy this mess", I'm not sure how we could do what we do. Very few "creative" applications use stock toolkits and RAD tools.
  - analognoise 5y ago
    The RAD component is optional; you're free to code up your interface if you'd like.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Which from what I can tell would buy me essentially nothing over any other cross-platform GUI toolkit. I don't use Qt, but QML and its associated tools look to me at least as good as Lazarus.
- 5y ago

donio 5y ago

I disagree. I am no GTK fanboy but if you actually look through the linked tutorial it's quite straightforward stuff and all you need to know is C. You can't get much simpler than some of the early examples except maybe in Tcl/Tk. If you look through an Electron tutorial it assumes familiarity with a whole bunch of web technologies and it's not any simpler. The reason Electron and the like are popular is because developers can take advantage of their pre-existing knowledge of these web technologies and have the option to reuse code between Electron and web projects.