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Loungy: An Application Launcher Written with GPUI, the Zed GPU UI Framework
- moondev 3y agoBuild fails for me on Linux. It appears GPUI is only intended for mac
- jasonjmcghee 3y agoI think GPUI is using metal api heavily right now Edit: huh- i read that but the Cargo.toml does like Linux- maybe early Edit 2: Looks in progress https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7015 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7015
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kvark 3y agoLinux support is actively developed. The working branch got merged earlier today: it compiles and runs, but a lot of basic stuff is missing yet.
- kevingadd 3y agoHope it doesn't look like the preview image in action, because the readability is atrocious. Pretty at least. Nice to see that it apparently has accessibility support.
- mgrandl 3y agoAuthor here: This project is incredibly buggy and immature at this point and not really intended to be run yet. I am blown away by the reception. Notes for people trying to run this: - it is MacOS only - the window bounds are hardcoded for my system, because GPUI lacks a way to center a fixed size window - the accessibility is pretty much non-existent. GPUI doesn’t provide an accessible text input yet, so this is a hacky minimal implementation. If there are any questions about this project or developing with GPUI, feel free to ask!
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoI appreciate you adding the caveats section to the README:) It's nice to clarify those things up front
- mgrandl 3y agoJup for sure. To be honest I didn’t intend for this to get posted yet. Just wanted to show it to the Zed team because they expressed interest.
- osener 3y agoNice project! How was your experience building with GPUI? How does it compare to other native GUI libs, if you’ve used any?
- mgrandl 3y agoThank you! I have mostly worked on web apps before this. I built the same app with Tauri before deciding to move to GPUI and a pure rust UI. Pros: - GPUI is heavily inspired by Tailwind, which made me productive pretty quickly. - I love the tight coupling between the Rust structs and the rendering. Makes for nice and reusable components similar to Svelte. - It's obviously purpose built for performance/latency and it shows. I haven't optimized Loungy at all, but it feels way smoother than the previous Tauri version. Cons: - GPUI is very obviously still in it's infancy. There isn't even a text input! - There is no animation system. This is a huge drawback compared to CSS/Svelte - There is no global hotkey API like in Tauri. But I could just take the hotkey crate by the Tauri guys and make it work for GPUI.
- nicolezhu 3y agoI love this - no not just bc it's written in Rust - following!
- SeriousM 3y agoFirst I thought "well, zed is just another editor, pfff" but the more news I see about it, the more it gets relevant. Especially the GPUI because it gets an alternative to Electron and Taurin. And rust..
- cultofmetatron 3y agoId love to see zed become to gpui like gimp was to gtk. now imagine if zed embedded a scheme instance for writing plugins....
- Klonoar 3y agoIt's nowhere near an alternative to a full blown web-browser yet, much less when it's still macOS-only. Tauri and Electron offer so much that is taken for granted when building GUI applications. GPUI, by all indications, looks like it's potentially got legs as a UI framework - the team behind it seem driven and I overall do like their approach. I'm not downing on GPUI and I do hope it succeeds, let's just avoid the hyperbole.
- subtra3t 3y agoI don't think its fair to compare GPUI with Electron until GPUI goes cross-platform, since that's the main selling point for Electron.
- lf-non 3y agoNot to take away anything from this project (which looks pretty cool), but for folks using KDE on Linux you have a similar launcher built in called Krunner (Try Alt+F2). It is pretty well integrated and has a nice ecosystem of plugins. Posting this primarily because I frequently run into people who use kde but have never used krunner.
- pubutil 3y agoI found Krunner entirely by accident after switching from Windows. PowerToys has a quick launcher that's triggered with Alt+Space. Used the shortcut out of habit after switching to a KDE environment, and was pleasantly surprised to see a similar interface pop up!
- CitizenKane 3y agoGPUI is looking more and more interesting by the day. I haven't had the chance to dig into it. Can anyone with experience comment some more on how it compares to other UI frameworks? Seems like it's a really compelling alternative to things out there. On the surface, seems almost like a rust variant of Qt, but not having to deal with C++ potentially makes it much more widely applicable.
- mgrandl 3y agoAuthor here: it is definitely still early and a lot of what you would expect from an GUI framework is missing. It just gives you the bare minimum of building blocks. You can think of it like building a website with exclusively <div> <img> and <svg> :)
- CitizenKane 3y agoThanks for the reply! That makes a lot of sense given where it is right now. Hopefully it will flesh out over time, but I'll definitely be giving it a look!
- pzo 3y agoIt seems that Warp.dev also might be using GPUI - at least that was my impression based on their website [0] (I might be wrong though). Which is a good think that another popular project is consuming such crate. [0] "... we partnered with Nathan Sobo, co-founder of the Atom text editor, who had already started building a Rust UI framework that was loosely inspired by Flutter" https://www.warp.dev/blog/how-warp-works https://www.warp.dev/blog/how-warp-works
- mgrandl 3y agoI think they started out using GPUI, but might have diverged. They mention flutter and GPUI v1 was Flutter inspired. GPUI v2 which is what's not released to the public isn't Flutter inspired anymore.
- jenadine 3y agoI wouldn't take a bet in using GPUI at this moment. Not just because it is limited to MacOS (the developers promised a cross-platform release in the future). I haven't seen any commitment regarding stability. There's not even online docs or a version available on crates.io yet. They might make changes without regard for stability. Are they going to make breaking changes while they're modifying their Zed editor simultaneously within the same mono repo? The Zed team, presumably preoccupied with their own editor, might not prioritize needs for other use cases.
- mgrandl 3y agoAuthor here: well aware of all of that. I am in close contact with the Zed team on their Discord and they are aware of this project (they even shouted it out on their Twitter). If there are going to be breaking changes, I can live with that as this is not a commercial project.
- TruthWillHurt 3y agoMac is a sickness. Even M$ play nicer and do less damage to the tech ecosystem than this walled garden of incompatible code and build process. Managing to break Rust's cross-platform compatibility is no small feat! "congrats".
- wredue 3y ago>Managing to break cross-platform compatibility is no small feat Neither GUI, nor application paths and standards are built in to rust. I’m as critical of the rust fanboyism as anyone. I don’t see a specific purpose for this app that, as far as I can tell, already exists and is built in to MacOS, indicating that it’s an example being “upvoted for rust” (not saying “don’t build things”. Practice and fun are perfectly valid reasons to build something that exists). But you could at least bring valid points.
- barnabee 3y agoThis looks promising! As an extremely heavy Alfred user I'd love to see a fully open source alternative (Raycast is a full no for me due to the subscription). I'd definitely donate towards development if it gets a bit further along.
- zellyn 3y agoAside: I don't believe I'd run across the Lucide library of free SVG icons before (linked in the credits)… very nice!