5 ms·

Interesting, this seems more resource efficient than even fltk, which is the lightest usable cross-platform GUI library. And it's pure C unlike fltk. It's grea

by rahen 4y ago

Interesting, this seems more resource efficient than even fltk, which is the lightest usable cross-platform GUI library. And it's pure C unlike fltk. It's great to see such projects in an era of unabashed resource consumption.

flohofwoe 4y ago
The price for the 'lightest' general UI toolkit probably goes to microui: https://github.com/rxi/microui https://github.com/rxi/microui Just around 1100 lines of C code. You need to bring your own renderer, but that's the same for Nuklear or Dear ImGui. I wrote a WASM wrapper for the microui demo too: https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/sgl-microui-sapp.html https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/sgl-microui-sapp.html
- jb1991 4y ago
  I love these kinds of UI frameworks except for one thing -- the text is always so poorly rendered. Not sure if it's just poor fonts or lack of good antialiasing, but compared to how a browser or native windowing system renders text, immediate mode GUIs are practically unbearable and make me want to close them after short usage. Maybe because I use a high-DPI screen (Macbook Air), not sure, but it feels like taking a step in the wrong direction for user comfort.
  - fizzynut 4y ago
    The default fonts are just plain awful. It's trivial to drop in a better font and make it indistinguishable from native. Possibly a licensing issue as to why they don't include better ones by default as you have to bake it in? or they want to make the binary as tiny as possible by not using a bigger font file?
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      Font is one thing. The hard part is text layout which is a very very complicated affair, especially if you want to support different languages and/or writing systems.
      - lstodd 4y ago
        Yeah this. Once you get to something more than plain English, it means pulling in HarfBuzz
        andsoitis 4y ago
        If you want visually pleasing results, even English needs layout processes like kerning.
        lstodd 4y ago
        :-/ must have mentioned that by 'plain' I meant monospace, С64-like
      - mdaniel 4y ago
        Your comment reminded me of "Text Rendering Hates You" (https://faultlore.com/blah/text-hates-you/ https://faultlore.com/blah/text-hates-you/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30330144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30330144 )
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    I must mention that the WASM demos all render to a half resolution framebuffer when running on a high-dpi display, and the resulting aliasing and upscaling may introduce all sorts of artefacts (even as late as in the browser and window system). I've configured the canvas upscaling to use point filtering because that looks nicer for Dear ImGui's and Nuklear's default pixel fonts (otherwise the text look slightly blurry after the upscaling), but the point filtering doesn't look exactly great for microui's default font. Using a proper TTF font rendered in native resolution on a HighDPI display will look a lot better. But proper 'non-native' text rendering is a surprisingly tricky thing to do right.
  - SideQuark 4y ago
    This one is 1100 lines of code, nice for embedded project. A nice font renderer is orders of magnitude more code, e.g., harfbuzz 25,000 lines of code with or FreeType with 245,000 lines of code. Many projects do not want that kind of bloat. I'd guess some of these little ones allows using your own bmp font, so render a font you like, and use the rendered glyphs.
    - krapp 4y ago
      >Many projects do not want that kind of bloat. It isn't bloat if it's desired functionality. Not every project is optimized to run in an embedded environment, nor does it need to be.
      - SideQuark 4y ago
        Adding 250,000 lines of code to render fonts to an 1100 line functional gui library is bloat no matter how you slice it. If someone want that renderer, it's not that hard to wire it in. And if you in particular want it, fork them and merge them.
        krapp 4y ago
        Meh. A small C library is easier to extend than a sprawling C++ library, and it's perfectly valid to want a minimal gui that can actually import fonts. Even just building a font atlas on top of that would be useful in a lot of projects.
- esprehn 4y ago
  Your demos are really cool! https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/ https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/ Interestingly the imgui and nuclear both work on mobile while the microui demo doesn't appear to handle any input. Imgui works surprisingly well (although everything is a bit small for touch).
- rahen 4y ago
  Impressive. This is suckless-grade minimalism.
MaxBarraclough 4y ago
See also the FOX Toolkit, which is still just about alive. https://www.fox-toolkit.org/ https://www.fox-toolkit.org/

by rahen 4y ago

flohofwoe 4y ago

The price for the 'lightest' general UI toolkit probably goes to microui: https://github.com/rxi/microui https://github.com/rxi/microui Just around 1100 lines of C code. You need to bring your own renderer, but that's the same for Nuklear or Dear ImGui. I wrote a WASM wrapper for the microui demo too: https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/sgl-microui-sapp.html https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/sgl-microui-sapp.html

jb1991 4y ago
I love these kinds of UI frameworks except for one thing -- the text is always so poorly rendered. Not sure if it's just poor fonts or lack of good antialiasing, but compared to how a browser or native windowing system renders text, immediate mode GUIs are practically unbearable and make me want to close them after short usage. Maybe because I use a high-DPI screen (Macbook Air), not sure, but it feels like taking a step in the wrong direction for user comfort.
- fizzynut 4y ago
  The default fonts are just plain awful. It's trivial to drop in a better font and make it indistinguishable from native. Possibly a licensing issue as to why they don't include better ones by default as you have to bake it in? or they want to make the binary as tiny as possible by not using a bigger font file?
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    Font is one thing. The hard part is text layout which is a very very complicated affair, especially if you want to support different languages and/or writing systems.
    - lstodd 4y ago
      Yeah this. Once you get to something more than plain English, it means pulling in HarfBuzz
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        If you want visually pleasing results, even English needs layout processes like kerning.
        lstodd 4y ago
        :-/ must have mentioned that by 'plain' I meant monospace, С64-like
    - mdaniel 4y ago
      Your comment reminded me of "Text Rendering Hates You" (https://faultlore.com/blah/text-hates-you/ https://faultlore.com/blah/text-hates-you/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30330144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30330144 )
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  I must mention that the WASM demos all render to a half resolution framebuffer when running on a high-dpi display, and the resulting aliasing and upscaling may introduce all sorts of artefacts (even as late as in the browser and window system). I've configured the canvas upscaling to use point filtering because that looks nicer for Dear ImGui's and Nuklear's default pixel fonts (otherwise the text look slightly blurry after the upscaling), but the point filtering doesn't look exactly great for microui's default font. Using a proper TTF font rendered in native resolution on a HighDPI display will look a lot better. But proper 'non-native' text rendering is a surprisingly tricky thing to do right.
- SideQuark 4y ago
  This one is 1100 lines of code, nice for embedded project. A nice font renderer is orders of magnitude more code, e.g., harfbuzz 25,000 lines of code with or FreeType with 245,000 lines of code. Many projects do not want that kind of bloat. I'd guess some of these little ones allows using your own bmp font, so render a font you like, and use the rendered glyphs.
  - krapp 4y ago
    >Many projects do not want that kind of bloat. It isn't bloat if it's desired functionality. Not every project is optimized to run in an embedded environment, nor does it need to be.
    - SideQuark 4y ago
      Adding 250,000 lines of code to render fonts to an 1100 line functional gui library is bloat no matter how you slice it. If someone want that renderer, it's not that hard to wire it in. And if you in particular want it, fork them and merge them.
      - krapp 4y ago
        Meh. A small C library is easier to extend than a sprawling C++ library, and it's perfectly valid to want a minimal gui that can actually import fonts. Even just building a font atlas on top of that would be useful in a lot of projects.
esprehn 4y ago
Your demos are really cool! https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/ https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/ Interestingly the imgui and nuclear both work on mobile while the microui demo doesn't appear to handle any input. Imgui works surprisingly well (although everything is a bit small for touch).
rahen 4y ago
Impressive. This is suckless-grade minimalism.

MaxBarraclough 4y ago

See also the FOX Toolkit, which is still just about alive. https://www.fox-toolkit.org/ https://www.fox-toolkit.org/