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Qt looks like the strongest candidate right now. I haven't started coding with it yet, so I don't know whether I'll embrace KML in my own code or go a more tra

Qt looks like the strongest candidate right now. I haven't started coding with it yet, so I don't know whether I'll embrace KML in my own code or go a more traditional route. One thing that stands out as a potential limitation: Between C++ and the metaobject compiler, I have the impression that higher level language bindings for Qt are more difficult to create (and therefore more scarce) than bindings for C-based toolkits. The Python bindings seem widely used, so that's nice, but I don't know about Nim (which recently piqued my curiosity) or Rust (which is getting popular). I would rather not go back to C++; I used it a lot in the past, but it was never fun or respectful of my time. On the desktop side, I'm leaning toward KDE. It was too heavyweight for me when I tried it ages ago, but recent Plasma releases seem to have lightened up quite a bit, and allow me to strip out much of the eye candy in favor of a more utilitarian experience. (It's still not what I would call lightweight, but it's closer than it was, and alternatives have been gaining bloat and closing the gap anyway.) LXQt seemed rough when I last checked, but if it ends up developing into something as nice as Xfce used to be, I'll definitely give it another try. I also intend to keep looking out for new cross-platform GUI toolkits. I have noticed a few in recent years, mostly in the mobile space, but whether they will mature into well-designed cross-platform kits that cover most people's needs remains to be seen. It's not an easy task.

Rochus 5y ago
> I would rather not go back to C++; I used it a lot in the past, but it was never fun or respectful of my time. I think Qt and C++ is a very powerful combination; Qt core essentially covers every aspect of the C++ standard libraries so I no longer use the latter; even before C++11 Qt had good solutions to avoid copies of data structures, and to implement efficient callbacks and systematic memory management, and tbh I still use very little of the more recent C++ features; it's also possible to build very fancy looking GUIs using the Qt stylesheets or QGraphics classes if need be. And nearly all code I write runs automatically on all platforms supported by Qt; I even use Qt core on Linux based embedded systems; asynchronous services were supported long before the JS folks got a taste for it. KDE undoubtedly offers some interesting features, but slimness and platform independence are much more important to me. > but whether they will mature into well-designed cross-platform kits that cover most people's needs remains to be seen. It's not an easy task I think the mobile use case is too different from the desktop one to provide decent support for both in a single framework. From my point of view Qt (besides Qt core) is only of limited use on mobile platforms, and frameworks like Flutter are (up to now) only of limited use on desktops. Even if the framework would support both in a decent way, the GUI for desktop and mobile must be designed quite differently to be used efficiently; platform-independent GUI code is therefore of little use here.

Rochus 5y ago

> I would rather not go back to C++; I used it a lot in the past, but it was never fun or respectful of my time. I think Qt and C++ is a very powerful combination; Qt core essentially covers every aspect of the C++ standard libraries so I no longer use the latter; even before C++11 Qt had good solutions to avoid copies of data structures, and to implement efficient callbacks and systematic memory management, and tbh I still use very little of the more recent C++ features; it's also possible to build very fancy looking GUIs using the Qt stylesheets or QGraphics classes if need be. And nearly all code I write runs automatically on all platforms supported by Qt; I even use Qt core on Linux based embedded systems; asynchronous services were supported long before the JS folks got a taste for it. KDE undoubtedly offers some interesting features, but slimness and platform independence are much more important to me. > but whether they will mature into well-designed cross-platform kits that cover most people's needs remains to be seen. It's not an easy task I think the mobile use case is too different from the desktop one to provide decent support for both in a single framework. From my point of view Qt (besides Qt core) is only of limited use on mobile platforms, and frameworks like Flutter are (up to now) only of limited use on desktops. Even if the framework would support both in a decent way, the GUI for desktop and mobile must be designed quite differently to be used efficiently; platform-independent GUI code is therefore of little use here.