4 ms·

I had a similar struggle. I needed a truly cross-platform (Windows, Linux/Wayland, Mac, iOS, Android) GUI toolkit with rich controls library and reasonable them

I had a similar struggle. I needed a truly cross-platform (Windows, Linux/Wayland, Mac, iOS, Android) GUI toolkit with rich controls library and reasonable theming. In fact, the only good option is QT and it's very hard to be productive with C++, it still lacks even basic features, like type deconstruction and ADTs/GADTs with exhaustiveness checks. QT bindings for other languages aren't mature enough. Apart from QT, there is Avalonia, which is full of bugs. Linux support is remarkably bad. Also there is Kotlin/Compose Multiplatform. It lacks good documentation, advanced controls and still full of bugs. I was unable to find any good controls library for JS/TS, even paid ones (like Telerik and others) are pretty messy. So, Electron, Capacitor, React Native - they all assume a non-trivial effort to be put into even a very basic app. Flutter feels extremely immature, and the strange popularity of global singletons makes it extremely hard to navigate even small codebases.

kergonath 2y ago
Are there serious issues with wxwidgets? When I was looking for this sort of things it was unglamorous, but had decent bindings with several languages and looked decent enough. I agree with your assessment of the other alternatives.
- pshirshov 2y ago
  If I go with C++, I'll take QT, which has lot more extensive controls library and in fact allows me to be more productive than wxw. Unfortunately, the main productivity limiter is C++ and that's something I really want to avoid. I've been writing C++ professionally for about 8 years so I think I can make such statements.
demondemidi 2y ago
Electron = nontrivial effort? What is so hard about Electron? The boilerplate is a snap, compared to Qt/Win32 boilerplate. Where do you fall down?
- pshirshov 2y ago
  You need something else to run your electron app on mobiles. Ok, you take Capacitor, fine. Probably you'll take React (or something else) to manage your state. Great. You still need some UI toolkit. Literally all of them, even the paid ones, are pretty basic and dumb. So, most likely you'll have to make your UIs pretty basic and dumb, or reinvent the world and/or dig through tons of half-baked libraries which deprecate faster than you manage to integrate them. Modern QT (with QML) has very low amount of the boilerplate, all the 7guis examples can be implemented with 20-80 LoCs and will run on all the platforms, although despite all the modernization efforts, C++ still feels dated and it's nearly impossible to be productive with it. The main issues are: lack of pattern-matching with type deconstruction, lack of ADTs/GADTs, lack of closed hierarchies, lack of exhaustiveness checks, lack of closed type hierarchy (no top/bottom), lack of typeclasses, lack of first-class functions (yes, while there is some syntactic sugar, it's just a sugar, e.g. you can't return two different lambdas depending on the template parameter from one template function).
  - demondemidi 2y ago
    I didn’t realize you were trying to take a desktop app to mobile. Outside my wheelhouse.
gopher_space 2y ago
After doing a "Hello World" window for every feasible GUI toolkit I'm starting to think I should be looking for reasons I can't just use Godot.

kergonath 2y ago

Are there serious issues with wxwidgets? When I was looking for this sort of things it was unglamorous, but had decent bindings with several languages and looked decent enough. I agree with your assessment of the other alternatives.

pshirshov 2y ago
If I go with C++, I'll take QT, which has lot more extensive controls library and in fact allows me to be more productive than wxw. Unfortunately, the main productivity limiter is C++ and that's something I really want to avoid. I've been writing C++ professionally for about 8 years so I think I can make such statements.

demondemidi 2y ago

Electron = nontrivial effort? What is so hard about Electron? The boilerplate is a snap, compared to Qt/Win32 boilerplate. Where do you fall down?

pshirshov 2y ago
You need something else to run your electron app on mobiles. Ok, you take Capacitor, fine. Probably you'll take React (or something else) to manage your state. Great. You still need some UI toolkit. Literally all of them, even the paid ones, are pretty basic and dumb. So, most likely you'll have to make your UIs pretty basic and dumb, or reinvent the world and/or dig through tons of half-baked libraries which deprecate faster than you manage to integrate them. Modern QT (with QML) has very low amount of the boilerplate, all the 7guis examples can be implemented with 20-80 LoCs and will run on all the platforms, although despite all the modernization efforts, C++ still feels dated and it's nearly impossible to be productive with it. The main issues are: lack of pattern-matching with type deconstruction, lack of ADTs/GADTs, lack of closed hierarchies, lack of exhaustiveness checks, lack of closed type hierarchy (no top/bottom), lack of typeclasses, lack of first-class functions (yes, while there is some syntactic sugar, it's just a sugar, e.g. you can't return two different lambdas depending on the template parameter from one template function).
- demondemidi 2y ago
  I didn’t realize you were trying to take a desktop app to mobile. Outside my wheelhouse.

gopher_space 2y ago

After doing a "Hello World" window for every feasible GUI toolkit I'm starting to think I should be looking for reasons I can't just use Godot.