Yue VS exomind

For a recent project I chose Yue (https://libyue.com/), a cross-platform native widget GUI toolkit with C++, JavaScript/Node.js, and Lua. I've only used the Lua interface and macOS backend, but it has worked quite well, despite the very steep learning curve. This was also my first desktop GUI app, so I had to learn many implicit concepts that weren't obvious from the otherwise extensive documentation.

Yue was also the only option that 1) supported macOS, 2) supported Lua, 3) was sufficiently comprehensive to build a non-toy GUI app, 4) and that I could integrate into my (static) build. I couldn't even get the wxWidgets Lua interfaces to compile, and Qt and Fltk had similar stories, whereas reverse-engineering the baroque Yue build (based on Google's internal build systems) was relatively simple. Yue had some sharp edges, but I was able to work around them whilst patiently waiting for patches and fixes upstream.

Immediate mode interfaces were a non-starter for me. For a non-trivial set of otherwise typical controls and window management you have to implement too much yourself, plus being non-native they not only felt wrong (which admittedly is somewhat subjective; the younger crowd seems to think non-native, immediate mode interfaces look more state-of-the-art), but lacked other interfaces for proper desktop integration, like theme change signaling (i.e. notification that a user switch between light and dark modes in the macOS system settings panel).

All-in-all I would highly recommend Yue.

I settled for Yue: https://github.com/yue/yue It's been around for several years. The deciding factor for me was that is has well maintained Lua bindings as part of the core project alongside JavaScript (Node.js) and C++.

I didn't have much luck with libui (crashes, missing features, etc), and various immediate mode alternatives just require too many dependencies and other work that made integration too painful. Plus, Lua bindings for all these were always stale. In fact, Lua binding quality is pretty poor all around including for GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, and FLTK.

There are many more JavaScript developers than C++ developers.

Personally I like Yue, a cross-platform native toolkit library: https://github.com/yue/yue But much of project was already using Lua, so Node.js and Electron were never viable solutions.

A native GUI library https://github.com/yue/yue.

It was a disaster when I announced it on Hacker News, and I got numerous harassments from strangers.

But anyway 2 years since then and I'm still working on it.

Is your PDF reader open sourced? It's a feature I'd like to implement at some point in my own personal project (https://github.com/appaquet/exomind)

I just added a few screenshots in the README: https://github.com/appaquet/exomind

As for the Gmail integration, it is quite crude at the moment. I use it mostly to organize incoming emails, but I still use Gmail to send or reply to my emails. Exomind inbox is synchronized with Gmail, so all emails that you remove from one or the other get removed / archived on the other side. It also supports multiple accounts.

If you are interested to try and not afraid of the rough edges, just let me know. I added Discussions to the GitHub repository.

Exomind[1], a personal knowledge management tool that takes the form of a unified inbox in which you can have your emails, tasks, notes and bookmarks organized into collections. I have an iOS and a web/electron client at the moment. I plan to eventually add files (blobs), definitions and support extensibility via WASM applications.

Its backend (Exocore[2]) is built on top of a personal / private blockchain and is made from the ground up to be hosted in a semi-decentralized fashion on your own personal devices (your computer, raspberry pi, a cloud instance, etc.)

It has very rough edges, but I'm using it daily to organize my life. It has also been my learning playground to improve my Rust skills over the last two years. If all goes well, I'm a few months away from some kind of tech preview.

[1] https://github.com/appaquet/exomind