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I keep trying Xilem and then egui or Iced. Xilem needs more widgets out of the box to be easy to build with. Slint is another option. I wonder what cross platfo

I keep trying Xilem and then egui or Iced. Xilem needs more widgets out of the box to be easy to build with. Slint is another option. I wonder what cross platform GUI framework (from any language) will finally become as common as Electron based apps or the vast number of native OS apps in Windows or macOS or Linux. I keep going back to Tauri, which is practical to build desktop apps quickly but still uses HTML, CSS, JS to build the UI. You can use Rust web UI tools but then it is still (system) browser based.

synergy20 6mo ago
QT does it well but the license is a maze
- ahartmetz 6mo ago
  Qt is LGPL. Anything that's complicated about that is Qt Company sales tactics. It's really just LGPL. Unless you were talking about commercial licenses - in that it's not that complicated neither; it's expensive.
  - synergy20 6mo ago
    I wish it's that simple. Not all components are LGPL, so when you're doing LGPL and you suddenly need some must-have-but-not-LGPL component,you're in trouble.
tvshtr 6mo ago
Something like GPUI probably, I would be quite happy with it if it wasn't so tied and restricted by the Zed's team (they reject PRs because they're not strictly related to Zed), there's even mobile fork. Dioxus native would be second, but it's far far far away from being ready.
- Levitating 6mo ago
  > they reject PRs because they're not strictly related to Zed What kind of PRs? Like new widget components or what? Maybe https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component would be more keen on accepting PRs like that?
  - jenadine 6mo ago
    For example https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/42905#issuecomment-3647662949 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/42905#issuecommen... So there is now a fork: https://github.com/gpui-ce/gpui-ce/ https://github.com/gpui-ce/gpui-ce/ But I don't know if that's sustainable.
    - Levitating 6mo ago
      That's disheartening, though also understandable from Zeds point of view. I hope the community fork could gain traction. I believe there's a lot of potential in GPUI.
      - tvshtr 6mo ago
        Yeah, it really sucks as I really like it, but I've been hitting edge cases which would be solved by some of the PRs mentioned.
  - tvshtr 6mo ago
    Not possible to do it via component. I've seen various, like custom user shaders or some silly basics like text justify (which is implemented in cosmic-text crate used by gpui). That's why it was forked.
feverzsj 6mo ago
Cross platform GUI is extremely hard. Qt is the only good choice, even though it's still far from mature after 30 years of development.
- dafelst 6mo ago
  FWIW Slint was founded by a group of long time Qt alumni, so brings a lot of that know-how into the space.
  - noodletheworld 6mo ago
    I gave it a decent shot, and I wanted to like slint, but I don’t. It’s not a rust ui system; it’s a declarative ui language that happens to have a rust binding via macros so you can write the custom DSL. It also has bindings for other languages. It feels like a bunch of qtquick people got together and implemented a new runtime for qtquick. That might be the direction qt has gone, at the expense of their c++ qtwigets system, but it just feels… “electron app” to me. If I wanted an electron app, I would just use electron. If I wanted a non-native ui look and feel, I would use flutter.
    - jenadine 6mo ago
      Slint has nothing to do with elecron. There is no browser under the hood so it is much more lightweight. Slint has native looking widgets. Slint DSL gets compiled to native code: no need for a runtime interpreter like in QtQuick
IshKebab 6mo ago
IMO this is the best Rust GUI option at the moment: https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component
- FrankenApps 6mo ago
  The only things I don't like about this is a) your binaries will become huge and very slow to compile with optimizations enabled and b) it's dependence on GPUI and its unsure future direction (I'd like to see GPUI thrive outside of Zed but the maintainers have clarified that that's not the goal for now).
- ldng 6mo ago
  hum, well, not that convincing : Failed to open window: WebGPU context not initialized. Was Platform::run() called? Not being able to load the component gallery does not inspire great confidence.
  - IshKebab 6mo ago
    Yeah it just doesn't have a good error message if your browser doesn't support WebGPU. It's not really designed for the web though so I wouldn't hold that against it.
    - ldng 6mo ago
      Fair enough. A little warning would go a long way though.

synergy20 6mo ago

QT does it well but the license is a maze

ahartmetz 6mo ago
Qt is LGPL. Anything that's complicated about that is Qt Company sales tactics. It's really just LGPL. Unless you were talking about commercial licenses - in that it's not that complicated neither; it's expensive.
- synergy20 6mo ago
  I wish it's that simple. Not all components are LGPL, so when you're doing LGPL and you suddenly need some must-have-but-not-LGPL component,you're in trouble.

tvshtr 6mo ago

Something like GPUI probably, I would be quite happy with it if it wasn't so tied and restricted by the Zed's team (they reject PRs because they're not strictly related to Zed), there's even mobile fork. Dioxus native would be second, but it's far far far away from being ready.

Levitating 6mo ago
> they reject PRs because they're not strictly related to Zed What kind of PRs? Like new widget components or what? Maybe https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component would be more keen on accepting PRs like that?
- jenadine 6mo ago
  For example https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/42905#issuecomment-3647662949 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/42905#issuecommen... So there is now a fork: https://github.com/gpui-ce/gpui-ce/ https://github.com/gpui-ce/gpui-ce/ But I don't know if that's sustainable.
  - Levitating 6mo ago
    That's disheartening, though also understandable from Zeds point of view. I hope the community fork could gain traction. I believe there's a lot of potential in GPUI.
    - tvshtr 6mo ago
      Yeah, it really sucks as I really like it, but I've been hitting edge cases which would be solved by some of the PRs mentioned.
- tvshtr 6mo ago
  Not possible to do it via component. I've seen various, like custom user shaders or some silly basics like text justify (which is implemented in cosmic-text crate used by gpui). That's why it was forked.

feverzsj 6mo ago

Cross platform GUI is extremely hard. Qt is the only good choice, even though it's still far from mature after 30 years of development.

dafelst 6mo ago
FWIW Slint was founded by a group of long time Qt alumni, so brings a lot of that know-how into the space.
- noodletheworld 6mo ago
  I gave it a decent shot, and I wanted to like slint, but I don’t. It’s not a rust ui system; it’s a declarative ui language that happens to have a rust binding via macros so you can write the custom DSL. It also has bindings for other languages. It feels like a bunch of qtquick people got together and implemented a new runtime for qtquick. That might be the direction qt has gone, at the expense of their c++ qtwigets system, but it just feels… “electron app” to me. If I wanted an electron app, I would just use electron. If I wanted a non-native ui look and feel, I would use flutter.
  - jenadine 6mo ago
    Slint has nothing to do with elecron. There is no browser under the hood so it is much more lightweight. Slint has native looking widgets. Slint DSL gets compiled to native code: no need for a runtime interpreter like in QtQuick

IshKebab 6mo ago

IMO this is the best Rust GUI option at the moment: https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component

FrankenApps 6mo ago
The only things I don't like about this is a) your binaries will become huge and very slow to compile with optimizations enabled and b) it's dependence on GPUI and its unsure future direction (I'd like to see GPUI thrive outside of Zed but the maintainers have clarified that that's not the goal for now).
ldng 6mo ago
hum, well, not that convincing : Failed to open window: WebGPU context not initialized. Was Platform::run() called? Not being able to load the component gallery does not inspire great confidence.
- IshKebab 6mo ago
  Yeah it just doesn't have a good error message if your browser doesn't support WebGPU. It's not really designed for the web though so I wouldn't hold that against it.
  - ldng 6mo ago
    Fair enough. A little warning would go a long way though.