glimmer-dsl-tk VS libui

# From: https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-tk#hello-progressbar require 'glimmer-dsl-tk' class HelloProgressbar include Glimmer attr_accessor :progress_value, :maximum_value, :delay_value def initialize self.progress_value = 0 self.maximum_value = 100 self.delay_value = 0.01 Thread.new do loop do self.progress_value = (self.progress_value.to_i + 1) % (maximum_value.to_i + 1) sleep(delay_value) # yields to main thread end end end def launch root { text 'Hello, Progressbar!' progressbar { grid row: 0, column: 0, columnspan: 3 orient 'horizontal' length 200 mode 'indeterminate' maximum <= [self, :maximum_value] value <= [self, :progress_value] } label { grid row: 1, column: 0 text 'Value' } label { grid row: 1, column: 1 text 'Maximum' } label { grid row: 1, column: 2 text 'Delay in Seconds' } spinbox { grid row: 2, column: 0 from 0.0 to 100.0 increment 1.0 format '%0f' text <=> [self, :progress_value, on_read: :to_i, on_write: :to_i] } spinbox { grid row: 2, column: 1 from 1.0 to 100.0 increment 1.0 format '%0f' text <=> [self, :maximum_value, on_read: :to_i, on_write: :to_i] } spinbox { grid row: 2, column: 2 from 0.01 to 1.0 increment 0.1 format '%0.2f' text <=> [self, :delay_value, on_write: ->(val) {[val.to_f, 1.0].min}] } progressbar { grid row: 3, column: 0, columnspan: 3 orient 'horizontal' length 200 mode 'determinate' maximum <= [self, :maximum_value] value <= [self, :progress_value] } progressbar { grid row: 4, column: 0, columnspan: 3 orient 'vertical' length 200 mode 'determinate' maximum <= [self, :maximum_value] value <= [self, :progress_value] } }.open end end HelloProgressbar.new.launch

Thankfully, community members contribute back to Glimmer too, such as vin1antme's big 2021 contribution of lightweight declarative drag and drop support for Glimmer DSL for Tk.

glimmer-dsl-tk: Glimmer DSL for Tk (MRI Ruby Desktop Development GUI Library)

Cryptopunks GUI is a Graphical User Interface for the famous cryptopunks Ruby gem, built with Glimmer DSL for Tk.

The main trade-off in using Glimmer DSL for LibUI as opposed to Glimmer DSL for SWT or Glimmer DSL for Tk is the fact that SWT and Tk are more mature than mid-alpha libui as GUI toolkits. Still, if there is only a need to build a small simple application, Glimmer DSL for LibUI could be a good convenient choice due to having zero prerequisites beyond the dependencies included in the Ruby gem. Also, just like Glimmer DSL for Tk, its apps start instantly and have a small memory footprint. LibUI is a promising new GUI toolkit that might prove quite worthy in the future.

You can kind of see the desktop UI train wreck in real time here.

We started with simple stable APIs for a common look and feel. For a while these were evolved and made available in other languages. This was back when native apps were consistent and intuitive and you could… uhh… actually write and ship them without bundling giant runtimes or checking a huge compatibility matrix.

Then around 2012 the train rounds the bend and screeeeech it hits some bad track and starts to derail. UI starts trying to emulate the web, a terrible UI platform, and sane compositional UI libraries and APIs are abandoned in favor of XML soup.

Since this stuff is a trash fire, this is followed by multiple incompatible attempts to replace or fix this. Most of these are abandoned dead ends.

Meanwhile the dev community just said fuck it and went to Electron, creating today’s world where a “hello world” app with an OK button is hundreds of megabytes and has to load an entire private copy of a language runtime and rendering engine.

Versions of this comedy of errors have occurred on every other platform, and of course there has been little effort to create a cross platform UI API that’s sane beyond Qt (with its own problems) and dozens of half completed OSS projects.

So enjoy Electron I guess.

There was one sane human being who tried to do this a while ago:

https://github.com/andlabs/libui

It’s the only sane desktop UI project I’ve seen in almost 20 years, an attempt to create an actual cross platform common API. But it’s abandoned of course, likely too difficult for one dev and nobody is going to provide financial support for anything that sane.

Maybe AI will get good enough some day that we can use it to do a thing like that.

What about https://github.com/andlabs/libui

Fantastic! This is similar to the C library `libui` since it also acts as a wrapper of native libraries of each platform.

If only there was a way to interface to these using some declarative minimal and highly opinionated programming language and paradigm...

https://github.com/andlabs/libui

For the GUI you will need a library or framework that interacts with your specifiv operating system and allows you to create windows and a canvas to which you can draw. You could give libui a chance.

libui-ng is a cross-platform GUI library with native widgets written in C. It is based on an earlier, (currently) inactive project known as libui. While Rust bindings for libui have existed for years (see ui-sys and iui), there is no solution for the new libui-ng; libui-ng-sys aims to fill this role.

libui

https://github.com/andlabs/libui is very nice, but unfortunately dead, if it serves your purpose consider using it, this is a fork under development https://github.com/libui-ng/libui-ng

https://github.com/andlabs/libui

Better yet, it has excellent DSLs that make it possible to build desktop apps in a way similar to HTML, but much better due to keeping all code dynamic in one language (no static/dynamic multi-language separation/mixing dissonance):

Maybe a module that uses https://github.com/andlabs/libui or a light HTML renderer?