System76's Pop!_OS COSMIC Desktop To Make Use Of Iced Rust Toolkit Rather Than GTK

[arun54321]

Yeah no. This toolkit is garbage tier.

Try harder.

[Awesomeness]

Try harder.

He posted plenty of unresolved bug reports that list fundamental problems that exist. What's your evidence-based counter argument?

[vandelay]

Gtk is for Gnome toolkit.

It was actually GIMP ToolKit, not GNOME.

[ClosedSource]

I presume they are taking a different approach to GUI toolkits because the norm is deep abstraction through class inheritance which best fits C++.

[arun54321]

He posted plenty of unresolved bug reports that list fundamental problems that exist. What's your evidence-based counter argument?

Just because it doesn't implement few unpopular features yet doesn't make it a garbage toolkit.

[frytaped]

Just because it doesn't implement few unpopular features yet doesn't make it a garbage toolkit.

Since when did accessibility become an unpopular feature ?

[mmstick]

I presume they are taking a different approach to GUI toolkits because the norm is deep abstraction through class inheritance which best fits C++.

It's functional programming similar to most modern javaScript GUI frameworks based on Elm architecture. Utilizes trait-based polymorphism instead of inheritance or classes. At any given point in time, the UI can be fully reconstructed from scratch based on application state, making it somewhat stateless.

use apply::Apply;
use iced::{widget, Length};

let button = icon("go-next-symbolic", 32)
    .width(Length::Units(32))
    .apply(widget::button)
    .map(Message::Next);​

Now I've generated a custom button type containing a custom icon type that emits a Message type on click. This approach makes custom widgets easy to generate.

[mmstick]

This seems like a super short-sighted decision. Most so-called alternative UI toolkits are very much lacking in internationalization/localization features, accessibility integration and the like. These are things are hard problems that take a lot of time to get right, yet you cannot cannot just ignore them nowadays. GTK and Qt are "bloated" for legitimate reasons.

Internationalization and localization are already achieved with Project Fluent. All of the GUI projects that we've written in Rust are using Fluent for translation. This aspect is really not unique to the GUI toolkit. Fluent works in command line and TUI applications the same way it works in GTK or Iced.

Accessibility is a solvable problem and there's already intent to use AccessKit. There's plenty of time to see AccessKit features implemented while COSMIC is in development.

A GUI toolkit being bloated is not the reason to avoid using them. Rust applications need a Rust-based GUI toolkit. GTK was just a stopgap solution to cover until such a thing is ready.

[mmstick]

PS: Multi-monitor management was absolutely flawless in Unity. Gnome is not designed with multi-monitor in mind and still doesn´t handle it well to this day. Multi-monitor add-on has been one of the most used extension for 10 years fort that exact reason.
It´s so bad that other DEs using Mutter have the exact same difficulty to manage multi-monitors.

Multi-monitor and workspaces will be killer features in COSMIC. Mutter likes to assume that people want all displays to be a part of one large workspace, or to have workspaces only for one display. Neither are valid approaches for most people.

[mmstick]

They take rust meme too far. They decided to use experimental toolkit just because it's rust. Same goes with their compositor. Really makes me think how can they sustain the whole project.

Rust was never a meme. It's a real movement that's been happening industry wide. Those calling it a meme have just been hiding their head in the sand while the tidal wave rapidly approaches.