7 ms·

Tk9.0: CGo-free, cross platform GUI toolkit for Go

228 points by nateb2022 2y ago

nateb2022 2y ago
Includes beautiful modern themes, e.g. azure https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/tk9.0@v0.53.0/themes/azure https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/tk9.0@v0.53.0/themes/azure
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
baq 2y ago
Figma killed the desktop app. I yearn for the good old days of standardized UI if I actually need to get shit done efficiently. Nowadays it's learning everything from either scratch; maybe if you're lucky, the designer put in some 'intuitive' (read 'fashionable') interactions.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  The Tk GUI toolkit dates back to 1991. This style of GUI predates Figma by decades.
- kristianp 2y ago
  Yeah, web dev sucks.
- Shorel 2y ago
  You write like you were born after all the events related to the desktop application had run their curse. We killed the desktop app, to free ourselves from the Wintel monopoly. We pushed the migration to the Web, because that was the unreachable niche for Microsoft and their monopolistic practices. We succeeded, and as punishment, now we have to endure all these applications written in Node.js with Electron UIs. We won, but we have paid a high price for it. In this context, Figma is nothing more than an afterthought. Something that appeared as a consequence, not the cause of anything.
  - oblio 2y ago
    Don't worry, mobile applications, which are basically another nightmare, are slowly eating the web for general purpose/public applications. And now we have 2 oligopolies instead of 1 monopoly, but in practice it's basically the same thing.
    - pjerem 2y ago
      The same thing but twice the work !
    - Shorel 2y ago
      True. Once upon a time, we believed in Google's “Don't be evil.”
  - fuzztester 2y ago
    >You write like you were born after all the events related to the desktop application had run their curse. >We killed the desktop app, to free ourselves from the Wintel monopoly. Bombastic nonsensical crap! There is no "we”, period. That is a fallacy that you, not "we", impose upon yourself, and try to generalize it to, or foist it upon, everyone. "We" didn't kill anything. and "we" were not slaves in the first place, so "we" didn't need to make ourselves free. Maybe you, and some known to you, were slaves, or still are. Don't generalize vacuously. This is not the multiple Oscar-winning award-winning Ben-Hur movie or the Biblical story of the ancient Israelites as slaves in Egypt or something like that. Anyone, who wanted to, or at least, any reasonably large group of people (1), could have moved off, from Windows, if they wanted to, badly enough. In the early years of Windows, DOS was still there, right? And had plenty of good software on it, just not GUI-based. and there were some Unix versions around, including maybe some cheaper ones. I rememember Coherent Unix and ESIX, for example. I actually work on the latter, briefly, in an early job. Microsoft's own Xenix existed around the same time too, plus or minus a year or three, maybe. (1) Say a few hundred or a few thousand people. As an example, they could have collected donations, and hired 20 to 50 smart computer science students, grad or undergrad, and / or professors and / or operating system developers, to create a better OS without the monopoly and bad practices of MS. You bet your ass, at least some people would have queued up for that. Set up some rules for correct behaviour, and kick out anybody who did not comply. >We pushed the migration to the Web, because that was the unreachable niche for Microsoft and their monopolistic practices. So, your only option is to run away from an enemy? And do you think that the enemy cannot follow you there? What about WSL and Azure and what not? Ha ha. Never underestimate your enemies. See the Stockdale Paradox. The Jim Collins version is a good one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153495
oblio 2y ago
He he, is this based on Tcl? It for sure seems at least inspired by Tcl/Tk.
- tecleandor 2y ago
  And latest Tcl/Tk is v9 I think. So I guess there should be something...
- felixr 2y ago
  These are Go bindings for Tk, a cross-platform widget toolkit initially developed as extension for Tcl. Nowadays a lot of languages have bindings for Tcl/Tk. Python for example has been including tkinter [0] for a long time. [0]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html
  - fuzztester 2y ago
    yes, for python, from 1.5 or early 2.x versions onwards, iirc. I've used py a bit from 1.5 and much more from early 2.x, is how i know this.
  - Pet_Ant 2y ago
    Really? Would love to see a binding for Powershell. Just for cross-platform shell scripts to be able to disable a pop-up for input etc. Just makes them more accessible.
    - shakna 2y ago
      That would be WPF. It uses Tk under the covers.
      - shakna 2y ago
        Ah, my bad. It is inspired by Tk. Should still be usable across most things today.
      - Pet_Ant 2y ago
tecleandor 2y ago
Edit: CORRECTION! This is a person that used to use the cznic nickname, maybe because they worked in CZNIC for a while, but now goes by "modernc" Seems like they've been involved in transpiling C projects, like TCK, to Go. Some context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33197603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33197603 ==previous message before my edit== Oh, seems like this is made by CZNIC, the org that admins .cz TLD. They've also done the Omnia Turris routers, KNOT DNS server or BIRD routing daemon...
- duskwuff 2y ago
  > Seems like they've been involved in transpiling C projects, like TCK, to Go. Probably best known for their port of SQLite: https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/sqlite https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/sqlite
  - exikyut 2y ago
    Huh. I once read drh note that no-one had ever bought any copies of TH3. I'm not sure what that does or doesn't say. But I would hope this is using TH3 in the development pipeline! If it's a direct port, the branch coverage should be constructively similar so as to be just as effective a test as for the C version.
- kunley 2y ago
  Yeah this gentleman is Jan Mercl and is quite known in the Go community. I think his most known project is the sqlite driver in pure Go, as opposed to mattn's driver. Modernc.org is kind of umbrella of his projects.
wjholden 2y ago
I'm really impressed that it can render math from TeX input. Is this a common thing in GUI toolkits? My graphics experience is mostly limited to Java's Swing and OpenGL from my college days.
- fweimer 2y ago
  Apparently it's embedding actual TeX for this purpose: https://git.sr.ht/~sbinet/star-tex https://git.sr.ht/~sbinet/star-tex (TeX is written in a Pascal variant, and this kind of transpilation is by no means unusual.) It's common to have HTML widgets in GUI toolkits, and some may even support MathML, but this here is a bit different.
kristopolous 2y ago
That motif toolkit with the detachable pulldowns and diamond shaped radios... I know tk has moved on but I have not.
- systems 2y ago
  detachable menus is an undervalued feature, being able to detach a menu or submenu and cycle through its element, is great to have when you need it
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    There's a bunch of innovative things that just didn't go through enough design cycles to get the flow right which have since been abandoned
  - HexDecOctBin 2y ago
    Is there a screenshot/gif/video/demo that demonstrates what you mean? Like, so you mean any group of widgets can be turned into its own window?
    - jjnoakes 2y ago
      The application menus (like File, Edit, etc) had a built-in way of detaching them when they were expanded so that you could keep them open and place them somewhere convenient on your screen. This was useful if you had to select different menu options frequently.
    - systems 2y ago
      here you go https://tkdocs.com/images/tearoff.png https://tkdocs.com/images/tearoff.png this used to be on by default in IDLE-python, but it seems they disabled it in more recent versions you clicked tat dotted line and the menu detached and you could place it anywhere you wanted
- fuzztester 2y ago
  IIRC they were called tear-off menus in X / Motif days. I had attended a company course on X Windows, Xlib, and Motif programming, back in the day. Motif might have been clunky or whatever, but was also powerful. That course was my first introduction to event-driven GUI programming and I was quite junior then, and didn't quite grok all the programming concepts involved, but a colleague, who was more knowledgeable, created a rudimentary MS Paint-like application, in about 1 hour or less, using Motif and C. (Okay, he worked in the same company as me, but in a different city, so might have had the hardware and software resources to practice on X and Motif before the course, which I did not have.) Search for 16.3.7 at: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/volume-6a-motif/9780596000431/chapter-223.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/volume-6a-motif/9780596... or search for tear-off menu at: https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch15.html https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch15...
cyberax 2y ago
Oh wow! This is super-cool. It's too ugly for "general-purpose" apps, but it looks to be perfect for internal management apps (control panels, tools). I'm definitely going to try it for my key-management server.
- FpUser 2y ago
  I do not see anything particularly ugly in provided screenshots. And many "modern" utterly unergonomic applications with lots of wasted whitespace, low contrast invisible text and "clickable" elements that look the same as the rest are pure abomination. But I guess it can be a generational difference. There are rather pleasant exceptions of course.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    I can't really tell why, but Tk interfaces always feel just a bit "off" somehow. And I also don't like modern "Material Fuck You" UIs, FWIW.
- melasadra 2y ago
  The"too ugly"has been my reaction as well. That said, I can't even elaborate as to why I feel that way. I'm totally fine with Material design, Fluent design or Apple's HIG, kde or gnome default looks. But this is just... not for me. I wonder if a ui/ux expert could put into words why so many others feel the same.
Shorel 2y ago
Back in the day, I used to really dislike anything TK related. It looked old and ugly. Now it looks like a wonderful alternative to all the bloated, wasteful, Electron JS applications out there.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- synergy20 2y ago
  traditional desktop gui,yes. desktop gui needs some web feature? electronjs is still a better option
  - DrunkenToast 2y ago
    Use Tauri instead if possible.
    - synergy20 2y ago
      tauri uses web related libraries on each OS which is different from a real browser,some website will not work
rob74 2y ago
Hm... the examples look nice, but there are several examples that render graphics and/or text on a canvas. How about demonstrating more complex controls, e. g. list views?
hajimuz 2y ago
CGO free. TK. I’m sold. imgui user.
drbig 2y ago
Tk! Some things just work. Never underestimate proven tech.
koito17 2y ago
How does this avoid Cgo? In the case of Ltk (FFI-free, Common Lisp bindings for Tcl/Tk), I know that the library communicates strings to a Tcl interpreter. This means no FFI is involved, but it does mean the user must have Tcl -- specifically, wish -- installed. Is there a similar requirement for this library? Unfortunately, GitLab is locked behind Cloudflare turnstile and I can't access the source code.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  can cloudflare even be called a cdn anymore?
- cle 2y ago
  It’s using purego: https://github.com/ebitengine/purego https://github.com/ebitengine/purego And linking against libtcl and libtk.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  > Unfortunately, GitLab is locked behind Cloudflare turnstile and I can't access the source code. Out of curiosity, is that true for $(git clone), too, or just the browser access?
tonymet 2y ago
how does this handle state management and event delegation? As in, when state is modified in one control , it instantly updates in the other controls. The examples show how to draw controls, but that’s the easiest and least interesting part of GUI apps
echoangle 2y ago
As someone who doesn’t know a lot about go: why is CGo-free a feature? In what situations is CGo (which is basically just calling C libs from go, right?) bad?
- cedws 2y ago
  FFI is an additional headache. Instead of having a single hermetic build process that just works, with FFI you now have to deal with shared libraries which may or may not be present, and may or may not support all the architectures or operating systems you want to target. FFI is why so many Python projects blow up when you run pip install. Then it takes sometimes hours to untangle that horror show.
  - cle 2y ago
    This is using purego which is still using FFI, it is dynamically linking the C libs so you still have the same shared library issues. You don’t have to setup a C compiler toolchain though which is nice.
    - Onavo 2y ago
      Why don't they just compile to C to Go like modern c does for SQLite?
      - masklinn 2y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42271142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42271142
        Onavo 2y ago
        I mean why don't they do it for the source library too? There are very few operations in C that can't be done in Go (mostly inline assembly and some pointer manipulation) under a standard userland assumption.
- danenania 2y ago
black_13 2y ago
[dead]
oefrha 2y ago
How I wish andlibs/ui (actually native widgets) wasn’t abandoned in a half-done state. Now to build any GUI in Go that doesn’t look abominable I have to use Wails, this is no exception.
fithisux 2y ago
Tcl/Tk the hidden hero.
joseph2024 2y ago
It is cgo-free, but it seems to require several libraries. I am concerned that some people may misunderstand that it can be run as a single static binary. $ ldd libtcl9tk9.0.so linux-vdso.so.1 libXft.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXft.so.2 libfontconfig.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1 libX11.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 libXss.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXss.so.1 libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 libcups.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcups.so.2 libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 libfreetype.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 libXrender.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrender.so.1 libexpat.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 libxcb.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 libXext.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 libgssapi_krb5.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgssapi_krb5.so.2 libavahi-common.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavahi-common.so.3 libavahi-client.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavahi-client.so.3 libgnutls.so.30 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnutls.so.30 libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 libpng16.so.16 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16 libbrotlidec.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbrotlidec.so.1 libXau.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6 libXdmcp.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdmcp.so.6 libkrb5.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libkrb5.so.3 libk5crypto.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libk5crypto.so.3 libcom_err.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcom_err.so.2 libkrb5support.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libkrb5support.so.0 libdbus-1.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3 libp11-kit.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libp11-kit.so.0 libidn2.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libidn2.so.0 libunistring.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libunistring.so.5 libtasn1.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtasn1.so.6 libnettle.so.8 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnettle.so.8 libhogweed.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhogweed.so.6 libgmp.so.10 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgmp.so.10 libbrotlicommon.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbrotlicommon.so.1 libbsd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbsd.so.0 libkeyutils.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libkeyutils.so.1 libresolv.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv.so.2 libsystemd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsystemd.so.0 libffi.so.8 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.8 libmd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmd.so.0 libcap.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcap.so.2 libgcrypt.so.20 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcrypt.so.20 liblz4.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblz4.so.1 liblzma.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 libzstd.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libzstd.so.1 libgpg-error.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgpg-error.so.0
karel-3d 2y ago
Oh it's another of those modernc projects, where it's just C, transcompiled to go? Yes, it is. https://gitlab.com/cznic/libtcl9.0/-/blob/master/libtcl9_0_linux_arm.go?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.com/cznic/libtcl9.0/-/blob/master/libtcl9_0_l... So the "actual source" is still C, but it is CGo-less. Which is neat? But I am not sure how it performs in bigger apps, what are its limitations, etc.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mm_aa 2y ago
This looks perfect for my command line go app. I wanted to add config wizard all along. One question though: app is primarily distributed through docker. Can docker app open a window somehow on all platforms? How?

228 points by nateb2022 2y ago

nateb2022 2y ago

Includes beautiful modern themes, e.g. azure https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/tk9.0@v0.53.0/themes/azure https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/tk9.0@v0.53.0/themes/azure

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

baq 2y ago

Figma killed the desktop app. I yearn for the good old days of standardized UI if I actually need to get shit done efficiently. Nowadays it's learning everything from either scratch; maybe if you're lucky, the designer put in some 'intuitive' (read 'fashionable') interactions.

Aurornis 2y ago
The Tk GUI toolkit dates back to 1991. This style of GUI predates Figma by decades.
kristianp 2y ago
Yeah, web dev sucks.
Shorel 2y ago
You write like you were born after all the events related to the desktop application had run their curse. We killed the desktop app, to free ourselves from the Wintel monopoly. We pushed the migration to the Web, because that was the unreachable niche for Microsoft and their monopolistic practices. We succeeded, and as punishment, now we have to endure all these applications written in Node.js with Electron UIs. We won, but we have paid a high price for it. In this context, Figma is nothing more than an afterthought. Something that appeared as a consequence, not the cause of anything.
- oblio 2y ago
  Don't worry, mobile applications, which are basically another nightmare, are slowly eating the web for general purpose/public applications. And now we have 2 oligopolies instead of 1 monopoly, but in practice it's basically the same thing.
  - pjerem 2y ago
    The same thing but twice the work !
  - Shorel 2y ago
    True. Once upon a time, we believed in Google's “Don't be evil.”
- fuzztester 2y ago
  >You write like you were born after all the events related to the desktop application had run their curse. >We killed the desktop app, to free ourselves from the Wintel monopoly. Bombastic nonsensical crap! There is no "we”, period. That is a fallacy that you, not "we", impose upon yourself, and try to generalize it to, or foist it upon, everyone. "We" didn't kill anything. and "we" were not slaves in the first place, so "we" didn't need to make ourselves free. Maybe you, and some known to you, were slaves, or still are. Don't generalize vacuously. This is not the multiple Oscar-winning award-winning Ben-Hur movie or the Biblical story of the ancient Israelites as slaves in Egypt or something like that. Anyone, who wanted to, or at least, any reasonably large group of people (1), could have moved off, from Windows, if they wanted to, badly enough. In the early years of Windows, DOS was still there, right? And had plenty of good software on it, just not GUI-based. and there were some Unix versions around, including maybe some cheaper ones. I rememember Coherent Unix and ESIX, for example. I actually work on the latter, briefly, in an early job. Microsoft's own Xenix existed around the same time too, plus or minus a year or three, maybe. (1) Say a few hundred or a few thousand people. As an example, they could have collected donations, and hired 20 to 50 smart computer science students, grad or undergrad, and / or professors and / or operating system developers, to create a better OS without the monopoly and bad practices of MS. You bet your ass, at least some people would have queued up for that. Set up some rules for correct behaviour, and kick out anybody who did not comply. >We pushed the migration to the Web, because that was the unreachable niche for Microsoft and their monopolistic practices. So, your only option is to run away from an enemy? And do you think that the enemy cannot follow you there? What about WSL and Azure and what not? Ha ha. Never underestimate your enemies. See the Stockdale Paradox. The Jim Collins version is a good one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153495

oblio 2y ago

He he, is this based on Tcl? It for sure seems at least inspired by Tcl/Tk.

tecleandor 2y ago
And latest Tcl/Tk is v9 I think. So I guess there should be something...
felixr 2y ago
These are Go bindings for Tk, a cross-platform widget toolkit initially developed as extension for Tcl. Nowadays a lot of languages have bindings for Tcl/Tk. Python for example has been including tkinter [0] for a long time. [0]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html
- fuzztester 2y ago
  yes, for python, from 1.5 or early 2.x versions onwards, iirc. I've used py a bit from 1.5 and much more from early 2.x, is how i know this.
- Pet_Ant 2y ago
  Really? Would love to see a binding for Powershell. Just for cross-platform shell scripts to be able to disable a pop-up for input etc. Just makes them more accessible.
  - shakna 2y ago
    That would be WPF. It uses Tk under the covers.
    - shakna 2y ago
      Ah, my bad. It is inspired by Tk. Should still be usable across most things today.
    - Pet_Ant 2y ago

tecleandor 2y ago

Edit: CORRECTION! This is a person that used to use the cznic nickname, maybe because they worked in CZNIC for a while, but now goes by "modernc" Seems like they've been involved in transpiling C projects, like TCK, to Go. Some context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33197603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33197603 ==previous message before my edit== Oh, seems like this is made by CZNIC, the org that admins .cz TLD. They've also done the Omnia Turris routers, KNOT DNS server or BIRD routing daemon...

duskwuff 2y ago
> Seems like they've been involved in transpiling C projects, like TCK, to Go. Probably best known for their port of SQLite: https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/sqlite https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/sqlite
- exikyut 2y ago
  Huh. I once read drh note that no-one had ever bought any copies of TH3. I'm not sure what that does or doesn't say. But I would hope this is using TH3 in the development pipeline! If it's a direct port, the branch coverage should be constructively similar so as to be just as effective a test as for the C version.
kunley 2y ago
Yeah this gentleman is Jan Mercl and is quite known in the Go community. I think his most known project is the sqlite driver in pure Go, as opposed to mattn's driver. Modernc.org is kind of umbrella of his projects.

wjholden 2y ago

I'm really impressed that it can render math from TeX input. Is this a common thing in GUI toolkits? My graphics experience is mostly limited to Java's Swing and OpenGL from my college days.

fweimer 2y ago
Apparently it's embedding actual TeX for this purpose: https://git.sr.ht/~sbinet/star-tex https://git.sr.ht/~sbinet/star-tex (TeX is written in a Pascal variant, and this kind of transpilation is by no means unusual.) It's common to have HTML widgets in GUI toolkits, and some may even support MathML, but this here is a bit different.

kristopolous 2y ago

That motif toolkit with the detachable pulldowns and diamond shaped radios... I know tk has moved on but I have not.

systems 2y ago
detachable menus is an undervalued feature, being able to detach a menu or submenu and cycle through its element, is great to have when you need it
- kristopolous 2y ago
  There's a bunch of innovative things that just didn't go through enough design cycles to get the flow right which have since been abandoned
- HexDecOctBin 2y ago
  Is there a screenshot/gif/video/demo that demonstrates what you mean? Like, so you mean any group of widgets can be turned into its own window?
  - jjnoakes 2y ago
    The application menus (like File, Edit, etc) had a built-in way of detaching them when they were expanded so that you could keep them open and place them somewhere convenient on your screen. This was useful if you had to select different menu options frequently.
  - systems 2y ago
    here you go https://tkdocs.com/images/tearoff.png https://tkdocs.com/images/tearoff.png this used to be on by default in IDLE-python, but it seems they disabled it in more recent versions you clicked tat dotted line and the menu detached and you could place it anywhere you wanted
fuzztester 2y ago
IIRC they were called tear-off menus in X / Motif days. I had attended a company course on X Windows, Xlib, and Motif programming, back in the day. Motif might have been clunky or whatever, but was also powerful. That course was my first introduction to event-driven GUI programming and I was quite junior then, and didn't quite grok all the programming concepts involved, but a colleague, who was more knowledgeable, created a rudimentary MS Paint-like application, in about 1 hour or less, using Motif and C. (Okay, he worked in the same company as me, but in a different city, so might have had the hardware and software resources to practice on X and Motif before the course, which I did not have.) Search for 16.3.7 at: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/volume-6a-motif/9780596000431/chapter-223.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/volume-6a-motif/9780596... or search for tear-off menu at: https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch15.html https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch15...

cyberax 2y ago

Oh wow! This is super-cool. It's too ugly for "general-purpose" apps, but it looks to be perfect for internal management apps (control panels, tools). I'm definitely going to try it for my key-management server.

FpUser 2y ago
I do not see anything particularly ugly in provided screenshots. And many "modern" utterly unergonomic applications with lots of wasted whitespace, low contrast invisible text and "clickable" elements that look the same as the rest are pure abomination. But I guess it can be a generational difference. There are rather pleasant exceptions of course.
- cyberax 2y ago
  I can't really tell why, but Tk interfaces always feel just a bit "off" somehow. And I also don't like modern "Material Fuck You" UIs, FWIW.
melasadra 2y ago
The"too ugly"has been my reaction as well. That said, I can't even elaborate as to why I feel that way. I'm totally fine with Material design, Fluent design or Apple's HIG, kde or gnome default looks. But this is just... not for me. I wonder if a ui/ux expert could put into words why so many others feel the same.

Shorel 2y ago

Back in the day, I used to really dislike anything TK related. It looked old and ugly. Now it looks like a wonderful alternative to all the bloated, wasteful, Electron JS applications out there.

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synergy20 2y ago
traditional desktop gui,yes. desktop gui needs some web feature? electronjs is still a better option
- DrunkenToast 2y ago
  Use Tauri instead if possible.
  - synergy20 2y ago
    tauri uses web related libraries on each OS which is different from a real browser,some website will not work

rob74 2y ago

Hm... the examples look nice, but there are several examples that render graphics and/or text on a canvas. How about demonstrating more complex controls, e. g. list views?

hajimuz 2y ago

CGO free. TK. I’m sold. imgui user.

drbig 2y ago

Tk! Some things just work. Never underestimate proven tech.

koito17 2y ago

How does this avoid Cgo? In the case of Ltk (FFI-free, Common Lisp bindings for Tcl/Tk), I know that the library communicates strings to a Tcl interpreter. This means no FFI is involved, but it does mean the user must have Tcl -- specifically, wish -- installed. Is there a similar requirement for this library? Unfortunately, GitLab is locked behind Cloudflare turnstile and I can't access the source code.

1oooqooq 2y ago
can cloudflare even be called a cdn anymore?
cle 2y ago
It’s using purego: https://github.com/ebitengine/purego https://github.com/ebitengine/purego And linking against libtcl and libtk.
mdaniel 2y ago
> Unfortunately, GitLab is locked behind Cloudflare turnstile and I can't access the source code. Out of curiosity, is that true for $(git clone), too, or just the browser access?

tonymet 2y ago

how does this handle state management and event delegation? As in, when state is modified in one control , it instantly updates in the other controls. The examples show how to draw controls, but that’s the easiest and least interesting part of GUI apps

echoangle 2y ago

As someone who doesn’t know a lot about go: why is CGo-free a feature? In what situations is CGo (which is basically just calling C libs from go, right?) bad?

cedws 2y ago
FFI is an additional headache. Instead of having a single hermetic build process that just works, with FFI you now have to deal with shared libraries which may or may not be present, and may or may not support all the architectures or operating systems you want to target. FFI is why so many Python projects blow up when you run pip install. Then it takes sometimes hours to untangle that horror show.
- cle 2y ago
  This is using purego which is still using FFI, it is dynamically linking the C libs so you still have the same shared library issues. You don’t have to setup a C compiler toolchain though which is nice.
  - Onavo 2y ago
    Why don't they just compile to C to Go like modern c does for SQLite?
    - masklinn 2y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42271142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42271142
      - Onavo 2y ago
        I mean why don't they do it for the source library too? There are very few operations in C that can't be done in Go (mostly inline assembly and some pointer manipulation) under a standard userland assumption.
danenania 2y ago

black_13 2y ago

[dead]

oefrha 2y ago

How I wish andlibs/ui (actually native widgets) wasn’t abandoned in a half-done state. Now to build any GUI in Go that doesn’t look abominable I have to use Wails, this is no exception.

fithisux 2y ago

Tcl/Tk the hidden hero.

joseph2024 2y ago

It is cgo-free, but it seems to require several libraries. I am concerned that some people may misunderstand that it can be run as a single static binary. $ ldd libtcl9tk9.0.so linux-vdso.so.1 libXft.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXft.so.2 libfontconfig.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1 libX11.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 libXss.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXss.so.1 libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 libcups.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcups.so.2 libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 libfreetype.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 libXrender.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrender.so.1 libexpat.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 libxcb.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 libXext.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 libgssapi_krb5.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgssapi_krb5.so.2 libavahi-common.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavahi-common.so.3 libavahi-client.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavahi-client.so.3 libgnutls.so.30 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnutls.so.30 libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 libpng16.so.16 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16 libbrotlidec.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbrotlidec.so.1 libXau.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6 libXdmcp.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdmcp.so.6 libkrb5.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libkrb5.so.3 libk5crypto.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libk5crypto.so.3 libcom_err.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcom_err.so.2 libkrb5support.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libkrb5support.so.0 libdbus-1.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3 libp11-kit.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libp11-kit.so.0 libidn2.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libidn2.so.0 libunistring.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libunistring.so.5 libtasn1.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtasn1.so.6 libnettle.so.8 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnettle.so.8 libhogweed.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libhogweed.so.6 libgmp.so.10 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgmp.so.10 libbrotlicommon.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbrotlicommon.so.1 libbsd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbsd.so.0 libkeyutils.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libkeyutils.so.1 libresolv.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv.so.2 libsystemd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsystemd.so.0 libffi.so.8 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.8 libmd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmd.so.0 libcap.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcap.so.2 libgcrypt.so.20 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcrypt.so.20 liblz4.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblz4.so.1 liblzma.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 libzstd.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libzstd.so.1 libgpg-error.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgpg-error.so.0

karel-3d 2y ago

Oh it's another of those modernc projects, where it's just C, transcompiled to go? Yes, it is. https://gitlab.com/cznic/libtcl9.0/-/blob/master/libtcl9_0_linux_arm.go?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.com/cznic/libtcl9.0/-/blob/master/libtcl9_0_l... So the "actual source" is still C, but it is CGo-less. Which is neat? But I am not sure how it performs in bigger apps, what are its limitations, etc.

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mm_aa 2y ago

This looks perfect for my command line go app. I wanted to add config wizard all along. One question though: app is primarily distributed through docker. Can docker app open a window somehow on all platforms? How?