dpg-examples VS Libraries

I've used Dear PyGui [1], which is based on this, and it has been a mixed bag. It's fast and basic functionality is super simple. The documentation is somewhat lacking when you wanted to start doing something non-standard. I would still rate it quite highly all things considered.

[1] https://github.com/hoffstadt/DearPyGui

Some related examples https://github.com/my1e5/dpg-examples/blob/main/threading/progress_bar.py

My personal IMGUI library [1] is what I call "partially retained" in that there is an immediate mode API similar to dear imgui or nuklear on top, but under the hood the immediate mode API just manages retained mode object graphs for you automatically.

This is a fantastic (imo) way to build user interfaces, because sometimes the most convenient way to manage state or construct a complex widget is to write a retained mode object that hosts some other child objects, and in other circumstances it's most convenient to write a modal dialog or something by just slamming out some imgui code in a standalone function.

I also think the imgui approach to layout (use an algorithm that can fully reconstruct your layout from scratch every frame without much of a performance penalty) removes a lot of potential bugs and quirks that are common in UI, like one-frame glitches or having to manually propagate state through a bunch of objects and layers. Though imgui approaches have their own downsides, like the "page tearing" issue. I've had to do some weird contortions to solve that one in my own code and I still get bugs occasionally.

1: https://github.com/sq/Libraries/tree/master/Squared/PRGUI

I haven't found good platform accessibility API bindings for C#, so right now it just has narration support, adjustable text size/contrast, and full keyboard navigation. I'm hoping that later on in my project's development process I'll have the budget to hire someone to try and fully integrate with the platform APIs - it's designed so it will be possible by pushing updates to the retained model.

The way it works is that it has an immediate mode API (see https://github.com/sq/Libraries/blob/0ca01d949e3df5fabb1440d... for a simple example of the API) and then under the hood it uses a lightweight retained-mode graph, which means that when it's more convenient you can just write more traditional classes and components. In practice most of the UI I've written for my main project is a mix of both models, like for example an editor popup window uses IMGUI-style API while the items in a virtual listbox are represented by a small custom component.

It does have a full imgui-style layout engine under the hood instead of doing retained-mode layout, so it's able to fully re-generate layout from scratch every frame, and to minimize page tearing there is a system where components can request a second relayout pass (typically used for things like text autosize).

Here's a more complex mixed-mode example from one of my development tools: https://gist.github.com/kg/6a6ba42d5019b546858a2b18751de019