;-)
Can you build these yourself? Yes but then do you want to if the basic text height etc is defined by the OS and so you need to test your widget on the 3 supported OSes...
nappgui looks great and useful and can be compared to the nim-native NiGui. Libraries of such kind (based on the os-native tech) cover about 90% of regular needs and get close to 100% in case of FreePasal's LCL.
As I see it, to have such a library paired with an ergonomic way for specifying the layouts at Nim disposal has to be one of the priorities for the GUI direction of development.
I don't get why would one mention a video player when most of the libs don't even have a basic checked list box or a simple grid widgets. You can't substitute them as easily as you can open an ffplay window for playing videos.
lvgl is a completely different beast.
- People don't care if things look like their OS anymore, they already use multiple OSs given they have smartphone
- What native toolkits provide that people want are context menus and consistent keyboard shortcuts
- They want good text input too
None of those things that people want are exclusive to native GUI styling. A good example is Chrome, which does not use system styled widgets, but does provide idiomatic keyboard shortcuts based on the host OS and good consistent context menus.
Since Chrome doesn't style itself like the host OS, it also stays consistent with colors and layout, making it more predictable to use. On the other hand, UIs that style themselves like the host OS can vary wildly in layout and styling, and fonts can also make things unpredictable. This adds huge testing burden on the developers, and they still might make mistakes that will be very annoying to the user. Like I said, users don't care if something looks like their OS, they care that it has only the important idioms of their OS.
I'm not advocating for Electron here, I hate it too, but what I am saying is that going for native OS look is a waste of time. Besides, these libraries usually have to work with the lowest common denominator in terms of widgets, and those that don't (e.g. WxWidgets) have to polyfill their own.
I don't get why would one mention a video player when most of the libs don't even have a basic checked list box or a simple grid widgets.
It's very simple to get: It was a list of examples, not striving for completeness, trying to outline how vast the UI space is.
Like I said, users don't care if something looks like their OS, they care that it has only the important idioms of their OS.
Weak argument. People don't care about lots of things because they're not stupid and prioritize their time, convenience and expenses over everything else. Other things they just tolerate or internalize as a norm, but this doesn't mean it's ok. Thousands of things chip away at people's attention, ability to focus and mental stability. Poor design choices or UX matter, just not enough to be critical (when not totally disastrous).
you should still actively style your components in your own way with your own colors, sizing and fonts to make sure things are consistent, which is what Chrome does.
As far as I understand you're talking about consistency between versions of the same program for different OS environments. If so, I'd like to see a citation for the claim that's what users want.
I don't expect apps on my phone looking/working in a similar way as on the desktop. On the other hand, I'd like a single environment being as consistent with itself as possible, and I surely don't want to see any "actively styled" components unless they work in some specific way or are a part of a highly specialized and tailored interface (the best example being a DAW).
I still remember when "skinning" was all the rage in the Windows world. It was mostly atrocious. Good designers usually aren't cheap and are not easy to come by.
The largest browser in the world does what I'm describing with much success. On the other hand, Firefox used to be more styled toward the operating system, and has also moved away from that. Even then, its default widgets are styled like the system, which has led to inconsistent and annoying styling, especially on Linux. I remember having some specific GTK styles on my computer years ago that made certain FF pages without CSS styling nearly unreadable because of FF respecting GTK's styling of textboxes and buttons. I actually still have at least one screenshot of this I took when it happened because it looked so bad.
I'm not saying everyone should roll their own custom application style, I'm saying toolkits should make very well thought out styling decisions and then use those on all platforms they support. Some OS-influenced styling can still happen, like the OS's dark mode setting. But I would be very surprised if the average computer user had any preference for whether an application looked like his or her OS.