Re:Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment
by CameronNemo on Thursday January 13, 2022 @03:21PM
(#29926283)
create a whole new GUI stack in Rust
Is there a reason iced is not good enough (other than not being accessible)?
Re:Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment
by pure_simplicity on Thursday January 13, 2022 @03:41PM
(#29926543)
No stable release yet, and you generally want your DE to be the most dependable bug-free part of your software, especially if you are selling hardware with your own software pre-installed.
but looking good so far, gonna check this out for myself. I was rooting for azul, but iced seems to be further ahead
Re:Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment
by hkmaxpro on Thursday January 13, 2022 @08:25PM
(#29929442)
Input Method support? (A feature used in various East Asian languages by over a third of the world’s population)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_method
https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/pull/686
See the challenges of properly supporting IME in Druid, another Rust toolkit:
Re:Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment
by gnud on Thursday January 13, 2022 @04:27PM
(#29927114)
I'm assuming Iced has no A11 support (these projects never do). Probably no RTL support. Possibly no reusable "system" widgets like open/save dialogs.
Re:Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment
by CameronNemo on Thursday January 13, 2022 @05:38PM
(#29927978)
Can you clarify what you mean by "these projects never do"? Your comment comes across as dismissive. Especially since I already noted that it was lacking a11y in my original comment.
Anyway although a11y and i18n support have not been implemented, they are planned.
Re:Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment
by gnud on Thursday January 13, 2022 @07:01PM
(#29928784)
It wasn't meant as dismissive of the project. It's totally fine to write a UI library that has another focus (games, for example). I'm just tired of those projects being suggested as alternatives to native/GTK/Qt in discussions here and elsewhere.
If Iced actually gets cross-platform accessibility support, that's great! Very few projects have that today. More certainly wouldn't hurt. But until it does, you shouldn't base a DE on it.
Edit: The issue you linked to is about RTL support. That's also required, but doesn't touch on a11y.
Re:Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment
by CameronNemo on Thursday January 13, 2022 @08:04PM
(#29929277)
My original comment mentioned and linked to the a11y issue.
Re:Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment
by awrmc on Thursday January 13, 2022 @10:08PM
(#29930165)
Iced looks pretty cool but it's focused on being a cross-platform toolkit and will probably not ever be the best choice for making programs native to Linux, like a desktop environment. If you thought there were enough problems between GTK and Qt with skinning, fonts, keybindings, and all that stuff, adding another toolkit to the mix just makes it worse.
1) do the yak-shaving and create a whole new GUI stack in Rust (which would be an absolute boon to the Rust community but will be a tremendous effort), or
2) switch to Qt (and basically become KDE)
Thinking about it, maybe Sciter (https://sciter.com/) would be an okay foundation to build a DE in (lightweight stack, flexible theming, solid Rust bindings). But then it isn’t open source (only the interface is, you need to pay for source access), so maybe not.