nana VS Elements C++ GUI library

If you want to start with a smaller GUI lib (instead of the bigger ones), you could use Nana (C++ Library), see also User Works using Nana - it uses modern C++11/14/17 (instead of older C++ like wxWidgets or the external macro processor tool MOC used by Qt).

https://github.com/cnjinhao/nana Boost Software License

well, nana seems to still be developed, but it's in another branch for now: https://github.com/cnjinhao/nana/tree/develop-1.8

I’ve seen people use https://github.com/cnjinhao/nana, but the other suggestions are probably better.

I would suggest https://github.com/cnjinhao/nana . There is also https://github.com/andlabs/libui, although that is C (not C++).

I especially appreciate its one string layout method nana::form::div(), see https://github.com/cnjinhao/nana/wiki/Div-Text

There's a relatively new C++ GUI library literally called "Elements". Not sure how it works though, but the way it looks, and the music background of its creator makes it appear designed for DAWs.

https://github.com/cycfi/elements

Further, if you we want a "modern" C++ GUI framework what actually would be modern would be to use mechanisms in the language itself as a quasi-DSL from within the language. This is something like what Joel de Guzman is doing with Elements

It's a complex domain. The closest we have at the moment is Elements which hasn't been proposed for Boost (yet?) but is by Joel de Guzman, the primary author of Boost.Spirit.

I ended up with elements gui https://github.com/cycfi/elements

If you don't want to use Qt I honestly think your best bet may be to become an early adopter of cycfi elements depending on your project. Elements is still rough but is useable for small applications. I think when it is finished it will be the best choice for a retained mode GUI library, but right now it is missing a lot of things (e.g. the standard common dialogs, "open", "Save as", etc.) , and has basically zero documentation.

github link

For the past year we were evaluating EFL, QML and Flutter for our embedded TV devices after having used the first two for last 5+ years and choice was made to go with Flutter. Performance is great, license is great, and development experience, judged by the whole development team, is the best. Hence my remark on being sad as QML could have had a great future, even transitioned to modern C++ without need for separate language, if there was a huge adoption and proper choices made by the company, e.g. see https://github.com/cycfi/elements.