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GL is only a drawing API. Then you need to handle fonts (layout, rendering), input and focus (including compose and input methods), actual window management, ..

GL is only a drawing API. Then you need to handle fonts (layout, rendering), input and focus (including compose and input methods), actual window management, ... Things quickly become quite a lot less trivial than it initially seemed, and then you end up needing an actual toolkit. You can certainly pick a more minimal one than a browser, but any application now requires a non-trivial toolkit. > Qt6 does include a JS engine, but hopefully it's a bit more isolated. I wouldn't expect Qt and Gtk's JavaScript engines to be better isolated than Chrome. They're just more avoidable.

nine_k 2y ago
> GL is only a drawing API. Then you need to handle fonts (layout, rendering) Exactly. It should suffice. Render text on a texture using FreeType or, if you feel fancy, using HarfBuzz. > input and focus (including compose and input methods), actual window management, No, not for a circular menu which is 100% mouse-driven. It's much closer to a game than to a desktop app. It should be about as complex in its functionality as dmenu, driven by config files. An optional nice GUI configurator for it could be a self-contained web app. > They're just more avoidable. Exactly: it's harder to access them from non-programmatic context, e.g. from a maliciously crafted menu item or .desktop file. Or so I hope at least.