Slint 1.0 Released As Rust-Focused Graphical Toolkit

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Slint 1.0 Released As Rust-Focused Graphical Toolkit

In addition to today marking the release of Qt 6.5 LTS, Slint 1.0 has been released as a Rust-focused graphical toolkit that also supports bindings for other programming languages. Slint aims to deliver efficient and fluid GUIs from embedded to desktop and features its own markup language...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Slint-1.0-Released

[mirmirmir]

Let's make a Linux desktop around it. Make the ecosystem more diverse with variety of choices.

[Quackdoc]

I have to say, I *really* enjoy the look and feel of the demos

[Sethox]

That's it, I am taking up Rust 100% now.

[stiiixy]

Runs in systems with less than 300KB of RAM.

Wow.

[uid313]

Many of these widget toolkits have no support for screen readers at all terrible support for accessibility as they're not designed to be accessible to users with disabilities.
Another thing to take into consideration is that many of these toolkits look alien, they don't feel at home anywhere on any system.
Another thing is that they're often only available for one programming language, in this case Rust, as opposed to GTK and Qt which you can often use from multiple programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, etc.

The good thing about this toolkit is that it is probably provides a very nice developer experience unlike other widget toolkits such as GTK (written in C) or Qt (written in C++) which are available using bindings but sometimes can be awkward to use in Rust and is not idiomatic Rust.

I've used GTK in Rust and it requires macros and has things such as @implements and @extends which is not really Rust-like, as it is something that is more in class-based object-oriented languages such as C#, C++ and Java. You also have to deal with GObject data types such as GString and GStr in addition to Rust's native string data types.

[uid313]

That's it, I am taking up Rust 100% now.

There already existed widget toolkits for Rust such as OrbTk, and via bindings there are GTK and Qt.

[JMB9]

There already existed widget toolkits for Rust such as OrbTk, and via bindings there are GTK and Qt.

It seems that OrbTk was stopped being actively maintained after the Readme on GitHub in favour of the competitors iced and slint.

[Vorpal]

Many of these widget toolkits have no support for screen readers at all terrible support for accessibility as they're not designed to be accessible to users with disabilities.

Not sure about slint, but at least egui (another rust gui) has explicit support for accessibility.

Another thing to take into consideration is that many of these toolkits look alien, they don't feel at home anywhere on any system.
Another thing is that they're often only available for one programming language, in this case Rust, as opposed to GTK and Qt which you can often use from multiple programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, etc.

If you read the linked blog post, you would have noticed that they explicitly mentioned they have support for native look and feel on a variety of platforms, with the example showing a good imitation of KDE Plasma.

To me this is way better than many apps that seem to think gtk = native on Linux... Especially modern GTK4/libadwaita apps with no menu bar and buttons in the window title look so out of place...

The good thing about this toolkit is that it is probably provides a very nice developer experience unlike other widget toolkits such as GTK (written in C) or Qt (written in C++) which are available using bindings but sometimes can be awkward to use in Rust and is not idiomatic Rust.

Haven't tried Qt from rust myself (I have used rust and Qt, just not together), but I expect it to feel pretty strange indeed.

I've used GTK in Rust and it requires macros and has things such as @implements and @extends which is not really Rust-like, as it is something that is more in class-based object-oriented languages such as C#, C++ and Java. You also have to deal with GObject data types such as GString and GStr in addition to Rust's native string data types.

I expect gtk to feel awkward everywhere. It does OOP in C after all...

[uid313]

I expect gtk to feel awkward everywhere. It does OOP in C after all...

Yeah, but the bindings make it OOP, so in JavaScript, Python and Vala it generates classes with methods, and in Rust it generates structs with associated functions.
In Python you can use the native Python data types or the most part, maybe somewhere you still had to use the GLib data types.

Unfortunately the Python bindings doesn't provide type hints though. 😢