Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?
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@bb36e said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
I thought services running on your local network like bonjour are supposed to deal with that?
That enables the discovery. It doesn't persuade the apps to actually make use of it.
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@flabdablet It's called saving money. You might not have noticed, but the objective of a company is not to make the best product they can, it's to make the worst product that people will still buy. This means reusing interfaces, which means menus on the desktop.
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@bb36e said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
I thought services running on your local network like bonjour are supposed to deal with that?
Yes. However:
- For some reason, most devices/programmers/companies still seem to have no idea that protocols like Bonjour exist.
- Printer drivers are still a fucking mess. You don't want to talk to a printer directly.
So the end result is that it's easier to turn your document into a PDF and send it to a server (email provider) which will send it to a server (HP) which will eventually send it to your printer somehow, than to just send it to your printer directly.
Such is life in
glorious Arstotzkathis brave new world.
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@anonymous234 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
it's to make the worst product that people will still buy. This means reusing interfaces, which means menus on the desktop.
Cheapest is not necessarily the worst, although it often is. But equally often, tight requirements is an enticement to think of the simplest shit that could possibly work and not invent a fucking Homer car, so, well, could be worse.
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@anonymous234 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Look, when I write a program, I want it to work on Windows, Linux, and any other OS I want without having to rewrite the entire graphical front-end. If OSs can't get their shit together and give me a way to do that while making the program look "native", then it's their own damn fault. You sure as hell can't ask developers to rewrite their entire presentation layer 3 times, that's wrong on multiple levels.
QFT
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@Placeholder said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@candlejack1 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Wanna buy an MP5 player? It's like an MP4 player, but it also has a digital camera.
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@boomzilla said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
While I'm exactly the same, there's a few things which still need to be physical.
Most of my printing is Cub Scout related.
Pervert
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@anonymous234 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Look, when I write a program, I want it to work on Windows, Linux, and any other OS I want without having to rewrite the entire graphical front-end.
Which means that you end up with an application that users on at least one and possibly/probably two of those OSs will find difficult to use because it makes the wrong assumptions. A Mac user won’t expect there to be a menu bar on each window, for example, and will likely soon be annoyed at moving the mouse pointer to a menu bar at the top of the screen, only to find it shows no more than the name of your app. There’s a lot more things like this, and most of them far more subtle, that make using an app clearly designed for another OS a pain in the ass.
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@Gurth said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
A Mac user won’t expect there to be a menu bar on each window, for example, and will likely soon be annoyed at moving the mouse pointer to a menu bar at the top of the screen, only to find it shows no more than the name of your app.
Ah, but that's actually the easiest of things for a toolkit to paper over. Harder is that different platforms have different expectations for what things appear on the menubar. Harder still is that some system dialogs have different modalities on different platforms; concealing the difference between a modal and a non-modal dialog is… not trivial at all.
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@dkf Slightly aside there was a guy I had the displeasure of sitting near who hates 5 pence pieces so much he would give them away, when asked why he said "I have a phobia of them".
The next day the support guys covered his desk in what much have been over ÂŁ10 worth of them.
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@tufty said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Pervert
Wait'l you find out what we're planning to do to some fish in a couple of weeks!
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Ah, but that's actually the easiest of things for a toolkit to paper over.
I know, but I mentioned it because it’s one of the most obvious mistakes to make when porting a program — yet one you inexplicably still come across.
Harder is that different platforms have different expectations for what things appear on the menubar. Harder still is that some system dialogs have different modalities on different platforms; concealing the difference between a modal and a non-modal dialog is… not trivial at all.
Or the fact that not all controls are available on all platforms, so you’d have to limit yourself to the ones that exist on all of them. I suppose you’d end up with an app that looks like it was designed in the early 90s.
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@Gurth said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
yet one you inexplicably still come across.
That's what people get for Doing Stuff Wrong. Some people are stubborn that way.
Or the fact that not all controls are available on all platforms
Or the fact that different platforms prefer different controls. They've each got the full set, but use them differently. Port the code naĂŻvely, and all you'll have is something that obviously sucks.
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@candlejack1 Want to make a guess as to what the latest Java GUI toolkit (JavaFX) generates?
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@Gurth Maybe that's a bad thing? If you are asking everyone to rewrite their interfaces for your platforms because you want the menus on top of the screen, and the dialog text in Comic Papyrus, and the buttons rotated 15Âş clockwise, that's extra work for everyone, and all because you don't want to look similar to your competitor.
Seems to me like those things will naturally tend to become more and more standardized, the same way things like door or window sizes become standardized to save on production costs. Unless you can actually convince both users and developers that there are advantages in doing things your way™.
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@anonymous234 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@Gurth Maybe that's a bad thing? If you are asking everyone to rewrite their interfaces for your platforms because you want the menus on top of the screen, and the dialog text in Comic Papyrus, and the buttons rotated 15Âş clockwise, that's extra work for everyone, and all because you don't want to look similar to your competitor.
You’re confusing two things here. On the one hand you’re talking about adaptations necessary to make the application fit a platform’s existing standards (like where the menu bar goes), while on the other you mention customisation that will make the app appear out of place. That’s to say, I would assume that an app uses the default system fonts, colours, etc. for whatever it’s running on, so tinkering with those requires extra work anyway — unless you only want to do that on one of the platforms you intend to release the program for, but then you’re choosing to make it more work than it needs to be.
Rewriting interfaces to suit the actual platform may be annoying, but I can tell you that one of the main reasons I don’t like Microsoft and Adobe software on my Mac much (despite using Adobe’s quite a lot) is exactly because they don’t really fit OS X’s UI guidelines and existing standards. Basically, they feel like ports from Windows — MS’s more than Adobe’s, though, but I suppose that’s only to be expected. And this puts users off.
Seems to me like those things will naturally tend to become more and more standardized
You’ll find that in a lot of fields there are several sets of standards, and while with physical tech you can usually only cater to one at a time, with software it’s possible to cater to all at once. But yes, that takes extra effort.
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
How else would you print from a phone?
My daughter wanted to print schoolwork from her Chrombook so I installed the Google cloud print connector thingy on my CUPS server. Wasn't too difficult although more annoying than it needed to be because the Debian package just has the program, not the systemd service file. And so now I can print from my phone, although that wasn't the initial intent. I've used that feature exactly once.
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@Gurth said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Or the fact that not all controls are available on all platforms, so you’d have to limit yourself to the ones that exist on all of them. I suppose you’d end up with an app that looks like it was designed in the early 90s.
This is difficult enough on the 3 mobile platforms.
I worked on an Titanium app back in the day that was supposed to work cross platform (HTML5, JS CSS3 in a browser instance). That should be pretty easy ... it isn't. Plus there are loads of things that don't quite work properly across mobile operating systems so you tend on putting in a load of detection code e.g.
if( iemobile && isapp) { }
Even if you use something like Xamarin the best you can do is have a common base and different UI front ends.
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@Gurth said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
looks like it was designed in the early 90s.
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@FrostCat said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@Gurth said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
looks like it was designed in the early 90s.
My calculator can probably benefit from this GUI toolkit. Too bad I don't program for it anymore...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
benefit
Are you sure that's the word you want?
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@FrostCat said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
benefit
Are you sure that's the word you want?
Maybe? It sounds more appropriate than "My calculator can probably friendship from this GUI toolkit." in any case...
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@FrostCat xaw is best
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@aliceif said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
xaw is best
Not something I ever thought I'd read.
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@dkf You've seen my wallpapers, right?
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@aliceif said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
xaw is best
Maybe if you're living in in 1985, but probably not even then--Motif goes back that far(ish).
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
My calculator can probably benefit from this GUI toolkit.
Isn’t this simply Motif?
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@Gurth said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
My calculator can probably benefit from this GUI toolkit.
Isn’t this simply Motif?
Judging from the quick-results returning from the archive, probably. But my calculator doesn't run linux very well (yet). Eh, I don't have time to invest, I got infantile technology to screw with!
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@FrostCat said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@anonymous234 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Comic Papyrus
NYEH HEH HEH
FTFY
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@aliceif said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
You've seen my wallpapers, right?
Yes, but it wasn't the look I was thinking about. Xaw was dreadful on the usability scale. Focus-follows-mouse at the individual control level?
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
Focus-follows-mouse at the individual control level?
You say that as if it were a bad thing.
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@cvi imagine it on a radio button where you end up selecting an option on the way to selecting another option...
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@Arantor IIRC it didn't do that. I don't remember the exact mechanics for radio buttons, but they weren't getting selected just because of focus. Focus here means just that the focused component gets keyboard input (so mousing over a text field would direct keyboard input to that text field).
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@cvi said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
mousing over a text field would direct keyboard input to that text field
And knocking the mouse even slightly (easily done when letting go) would move the mouse pointer off the text field and take focus away from it (because it was being handed to the surrounding unresponsive structural widget). We Don't Do It That Way Now, and that's because strict focus-follows-mouse has been tried and found to suck mightily.
BTDT. Don't wanna go back.
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
and that's because strict focus-follows-mouse has been tried and found to suck mightily.
The first thing that pissed me off in Win10. It's great when you accidentally change a setting in a rolled-up dropdown because you were scrolling through a page on the other monitor and weren't paying attention to where your mouse is.
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@Maciejasjmj said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
and that's because strict focus-follows-mouse has been tried and found to suck mightily.
The first thing that pissed me off in Win10. It's great when you accidentally change a setting in a rolled-up dropdown because you were scrolling through a page on the other monitor and weren't paying attention to where your mouse is.
Or worse, when scrolling and the mouse just happened to "land" on such an element and now the page seems to "pause" for a moment because it's actually scrolling something with an invisible scrollbar to the end before continuing on it's merry way.
Double whammy for when this happens while coasting...
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@dkf said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
because it was being handed to the surrounding unresponsive structural widget
To be fair, a sloppy focus approach would be better, where focus stays at a component until another active component gets it.
BTDT. Don't wanna go back.
*shrug* I didn't mind it. I have far much more hate for the modern everything-is-a-phone-or-at-least-a-tablet-with-a-touchscreen-whose-user-has-fingers-the-size-of-a-proper-kalbsbratwurst. (Which incidentally would reduce the problems of knocking the mouse off the text field, because you'd have to hit the mouse halfway across the desk.)
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@FrostCat Wait... For the second Gauge control, aren't the E and F side inverted? I think we normally have Empty at the bottom and Full at the top.
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@cvi said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
To be fair, a sloppy focus approach would be better, where focus stays at a component until another active component gets it.
That's not the Xaw way!
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Another reason why html is used nowadays for most UI comes from a business perspective : It is easier to find Web developers than native developers.
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@cvi said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
I have far much more hate for the modern everything-is-a-phone-or-at-least-a-tablet-with-a-touchscreen-whose-user-has-fingers-the-size-of-a-proper-kalbsbratwurst.
I wish someone would tell that to whoever designed Google Books’ user interface. It’s almost impossible to use on an iPad because the buttons at the top of the screen are about a square millimeter “large” (OK, I’m exaggerating — but not much) and if I wasn’t near-sighted I’d need glasses to see what’s on them. Oh, and I also wish to thank them for implementing their own scrolling instead of relying on the browser’s.
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@anonymous234 said in Native GUI toolkits: are they still used much?:
This means reusing interfaces, which means menus on the desktop.
What would
Brian BoitanoQt do?... change target to Android...
OH LOOK!
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@Onyx Great; now how do you use it from a language that doesn't suck?
Actually I don't even know if QT is still C++ only, but C++ sucks and I like to call that out at every opportunity.
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@blakeyrat I think you can use it from Python too. Which still sucks though.
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@blakeyrat works fine for me. And most of the C++' stupid is abstracted away by Qt's classes (hell, some of them are nicer to use than C# or Java equivalents).
Also, if you want to use the controls that look native on mobile as well as desktop you should be using QtQuick anyway which let's you script all of the UI in JavaScript, you don't even have to touch C++ unless you really want it to handle some heavy lifting in the background.
Not that JavaScript is really that good but hey, it's an option.
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@dkf Looks like you're trying to use QT with other languages.
Would you like help?
More serioulsy, all these bindings look very shitty. The C# one has this footnote:
QtSharp has been tested only with Qt for MinGW, and with Qt's built-in MinGW set-up, so far.
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Interestingly, GTK's C# wrapper had a designer in Monodevelop (and probably in Xamarin Stupidfail). I never tried using it for anything, though.