4 ms·

I assume this means accessibility is roughly zero. I'm sure it was a ton of fun for the engineers to write with something exciting and new, but the downsides of

by rafram 2y ago

I assume this means accessibility is roughly zero. I'm sure it was a ton of fun for the engineers to write with something exciting and new, but the downsides of using a half-baked UI framework are significant. I tried Halloy [1], an IRC client that's listed as the first showcase app on Iced's site. It's pretty, but it doesn't even support triple-click selection or context menus. There is no menubar on macOS. Iced is very nice for an upstart UI framework - I don't want to minimize the amount of work that they've put into it, and how cool it is that they've gotten so far - but shipping a desktop environment based on it is shortsighted. [1]: https://github.com/squidowl/halloy https://github.com/squidowl/halloy

airstrike 2y ago
Halloy has context menus. https://images2.imgbox.com/20/05/yOa1IrVS_o.png https://images2.imgbox.com/20/05/yOa1IrVS_o.png Iced has accessibility listed as the first item on its roadmap after the upcoming 0.13 release. https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7vhq6R35Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7vhq6R35Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM You're misjudging an experimental library for not having every feature you could ever want before an 1.0 released without doing your diligence. The docs literally open with iced is a cross-platform GUI library focused on simplicity and type-safety. Inspired by Elm. Disclaimer –––––––––– iced is experimental software https://docs.iced.rs/iced/ https://docs.iced.rs/iced/
- rafram 2y ago
  Not text editing context menus like any native app. As I said, Iced looks awesome. But it's also, as you said, experimental. Using an experimental library for a DE could be a huge mistake, no matter how promising the roadmap is. Ideally you'd wait for the project to ship some of the non-negotiable things on the roadmap (accessibility, system menus, RTL text, keyboard navigation...) before tying your fortunes to it.
  - airstrike 2y ago
    I think native context menus are out of scope for iced and probably to be addressed upstream by winit. patches welcome. at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I encourage you to try to use iced as a library first to see how powerful it is in terms of performance, ergonomics and overall just the quality of its design. hecrj is a prolific coder and I'm confident I'm not alone in this assessment. I'm pretty bullish on the path ahead for the library given those fundamentals, and I can't speak for the COSMIC team but I imagine that assessment probably overlaps with theirs.
    - rafram 2y ago
      I mean text editing context menus (right-click a text field -> Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste). Iced, or at least Halloy, doesn't have those at all.
      - airstrike 2y ago
        You can definitely implement all of that in iced. The `text_editor` widget offers cut, copy, paste off-the-shelf and undo/redo would be a matter of keeping a stack of the "input changed" messages and popping off changes to undo/redo them. The library is pretty low level so there's a bit of legwork that the developer needs to do in order to implement things that you get for free in, say, a browser. It's a tradeoff, but I think one that tends to provide more advantages than disadvantages.
jorams 2y ago
Based on [1] it looks like System76 does actually think about accessibility, but it's not upstreamed yet. [1]: https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552#issuecomment-2180837663 https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552#issuecomment-2180...
- rafram 2y ago
  That's encouraging!
billmcneale 2y ago
What library that addresses your complaints do you think they should have used instead of iced?
- rafram 2y ago
  GTK? Qt? They're not exciting, but they sure do work.
  - jasonvorhe 2y ago
    And then it would be just another minimalist desktop environment trying to compete with Gnome.
    - rafram 2y ago
      Well, sure? Is that not what this already is? They could even write their GTK or Qt apps in Rust if they wanted to!
      - WD-42 2y ago
        Using a native toolkit built for Rust has massive productivity benefits when writing programs in Rust. Last I checked the GTK bindings for Rust were rough at best, I don't even know if they exist for QT.
        rafram 2y ago
        The people using the DE don't care what programming language it's written in, so it's absurd to ask users to accept a rough/inferior/buggy/inaccessible system because an experimental UI library was more enjoyable for the developers.
        WD-42 2y ago
        They won't have to accept anything if the developer never writes code in the first place... this is a ridiculous argument. How do you think most open source desktop software gets made?

by rafram 2y ago

airstrike 2y ago

Halloy has context menus. https://images2.imgbox.com/20/05/yOa1IrVS_o.png https://images2.imgbox.com/20/05/yOa1IrVS_o.png Iced has accessibility listed as the first item on its roadmap after the upcoming 0.13 release. https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7vhq6R35Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7vhq6R35Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM You're misjudging an experimental library for not having every feature you could ever want before an 1.0 released without doing your diligence. The docs literally open with iced is a cross-platform GUI library focused on simplicity and type-safety. Inspired by Elm. Disclaimer –––––––––– iced is experimental software https://docs.iced.rs/iced/ https://docs.iced.rs/iced/

rafram 2y ago
Not text editing context menus like any native app. As I said, Iced looks awesome. But it's also, as you said, experimental. Using an experimental library for a DE could be a huge mistake, no matter how promising the roadmap is. Ideally you'd wait for the project to ship some of the non-negotiable things on the roadmap (accessibility, system menus, RTL text, keyboard navigation...) before tying your fortunes to it.
- airstrike 2y ago
  I think native context menus are out of scope for iced and probably to be addressed upstream by winit. patches welcome. at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I encourage you to try to use iced as a library first to see how powerful it is in terms of performance, ergonomics and overall just the quality of its design. hecrj is a prolific coder and I'm confident I'm not alone in this assessment. I'm pretty bullish on the path ahead for the library given those fundamentals, and I can't speak for the COSMIC team but I imagine that assessment probably overlaps with theirs.
  - rafram 2y ago
    I mean text editing context menus (right-click a text field -> Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste). Iced, or at least Halloy, doesn't have those at all.
    - airstrike 2y ago
      You can definitely implement all of that in iced. The `text_editor` widget offers cut, copy, paste off-the-shelf and undo/redo would be a matter of keeping a stack of the "input changed" messages and popping off changes to undo/redo them. The library is pretty low level so there's a bit of legwork that the developer needs to do in order to implement things that you get for free in, say, a browser. It's a tradeoff, but I think one that tends to provide more advantages than disadvantages.

jorams 2y ago

Based on [1] it looks like System76 does actually think about accessibility, but it's not upstreamed yet. [1]: https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552#issuecomment-2180837663 https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552#issuecomment-2180...

rafram 2y ago
That's encouraging!

billmcneale 2y ago

What library that addresses your complaints do you think they should have used instead of iced?

rafram 2y ago
GTK? Qt? They're not exciting, but they sure do work.
- jasonvorhe 2y ago
  And then it would be just another minimalist desktop environment trying to compete with Gnome.
  - rafram 2y ago
    Well, sure? Is that not what this already is? They could even write their GTK or Qt apps in Rust if they wanted to!
    - WD-42 2y ago
      Using a native toolkit built for Rust has massive productivity benefits when writing programs in Rust. Last I checked the GTK bindings for Rust were rough at best, I don't even know if they exist for QT.
      - rafram 2y ago
        The people using the DE don't care what programming language it's written in, so it's absurd to ask users to accept a rough/inferior/buggy/inaccessible system because an experimental UI library was more enjoyable for the developers.
        WD-42 2y ago
        They won't have to accept anything if the developer never writes code in the first place... this is a ridiculous argument. How do you think most open source desktop software gets made?