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8409 :: What is the status of Nim IUP?

• marks (orginal) [2021-09-10T09:33:51+02:00] view original

  The standard library documentation includes bindings to the IUP GUI library.

  However, no direct downloads are provided, not is there any information on how to build a Nim IUP GUI application with IUP either statically or dynamically.

  Are these bindings maintained?

  Is IUP the official GUI library for Nim?

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• Neodim (orginal) [2021-09-10T10:42:10+02:00] view original

  Well, I would say it is the awesome library but unfortunately it is not maintained for years.

  But it may be downloaded and set up manually at https://github.com/nim-lang/iup.

  It works perfect with Windows and Linux platforms, but I could not compile it on MacOS.

  Note, that you will need to have dynamic libs, which are available at IUP web-site: https://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/

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• Araq (orginal) [2021-09-10T12:32:48+02:00] view original

  I would use Fidget, Qt, Gtk3 or wxWidgets instead. The "small and written in C" stuff usually suffers from these problems:

  • Type unsafe APIs. Welcome to callbacks taking pointer arguments.
  • Type unsafe APIs. Welcome to passing string values instead of enum values for "extensibility" and lots of undocumented behavior.
  • Ridiculous memory management. ("This editor component can handle text lengths of up to 2MB.")
  • Error handling problems. Welcome to UI libraries that produce warnings/errors on stderr you might want to fix. Or not, it's unclear since everything keeps running after an error anyway, but doesn't work properly anymore either.
  • It is only small as it lacks:
    • an embeddable web brower component
    • an editor component that can do syntax highlighting
    • a component that can play videos or audio including pause/resume controls.

  Sorry for the rant.

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• marks (orginal) [2021-09-10T12:56:23+02:00] view original

  Thanks for your replies.

  Maybe IUP should be dropped from the standard library then?

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• Araq (orginal) [2021-09-10T14:01:12+02:00] view original

  But it was dropped, it's now a Nimble package. Under the nim-lang organization, but still.

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• juancarlospaco (orginal) [2021-09-10T15:13:49+02:00] view original

  IUP does include a browser widget, text editor widget and IDE widget.

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• Araq (orginal) [2021-09-10T15:53:10+02:00] view original

  That's news to me. :-)

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