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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: 'Graphics' of libwy
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2024 09:09:22 +0100
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On 17/12/2024 17:53, Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:30:18 +0100
> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wibbled:
>> On 17/12/2024 17:02, Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org wrote:
>>> Personally I'd go with Qt. Its mature and cross platform and does what 99%
>>> of most people need.
>>>
>>
>> No, it doesn't come close to that.  It's a solid gui library with lots
>> of extra tools, and is useful to many people - but it's nothing remotely
>> like you suggest.
>>
>> It has a license that is totally unsuitable for standardisation.  I'm
>> not complaining about the license - the people that wrote the library
>> get to pick the license.  But a standard C++ gui library, if such a
>> thing is ever made, has to have a very liberal license - BSD/MIT at most.
>>
>> And Qt is hardly a lightweight choice either.
> 
> None of them are. If you want lightweight don't use a cross platform library.

That's not true - FLTK comes to mind.  (I have not used it.)

Sometimes you want a heavyweight toolkit with lots of features, 
sometimes you want a lightweight toolkit.  And sometimes you want 
something completely different, such as an immediate mode gui toolkit. 
This is why a /standard/ C++ gui library makes little sense.

Look at other languages - Python has a "standard" gui library based on 
Tkinter, but there are a dozen other popular gui toolkits used with 
Python.  One size does not come close to fitting all for gui toolkits.

> 
>> I think if there is ever going to be a standard gui library for C++, it
>> will be written specially for the purpose.  That has some big advantages
>> - if the designers decide they need extra language features for signals
>> and slots, for example, then those can be added to the language rather
>> than using an external tool.
> 
> You don't want a library that only works with the latest bleeding edge versions
> of C++. IMO C++ 2011 would be a reasonable oldest version.
> 

I'd much rather have one that takes advantage of relatively modern C++ 
features than one that re-invented these same features in their one 
special ways - which is what you see with these older libraries.  I'd 
put C++11 as a minimum stepping point - C++ post-C++11 is a very 
different language from that of pre-C++11.  But if I were looking for a 
new, well-designed modern C++ gui library, I'd want to see concepts, 
std::format, ranges, and that the whole thing was organised in modules. 
That all means C++20.  It's worth upgrading your tools for those for 
something like a gui library.

But if the C++ committee were to make a standard C++ gui library as part 
of the C++ standard, then it would by definition be part of a later C++ 
standard.  So if it was targeted for C++29, then of course it could rely 
on all the language and library features of standard C++ up to and 
including C++29.