[indigo945]

What do you feel is a more "modern" way to do a GUI in C++?

As an aside, do "modern" developers still write GUI applications at all, since everything is on the web anyway these days?

[krapht]

Is this a joke? There's a whole world of software out there that isn't web based. Anybody who hasn't switched to a Chromebook uses them every day.

I even write terminal user interfaces sometimes to interact with servers that don't have a desktop environment installed.

[cat199]

if you reread, this is what the parent is asking of the grandparent, in less nice terms.

[einpoklum]

Well, the question of what's "modern" in C++ is both deep and contentions. But I won't shirk the question...

You want to be utilizing the features C++11, C++14 and maybe even newer versions of the standard allow you to use, to avoid unnecessary boilerplate, repetition, and arcane-ness of syntax and semantics.

Similarly, the GUI toolkit should not be based on C-like or C++98-like design patterns, when newer versions of the standard allow replacing them with more convenient patterns.

Here's one example, from the Nana C++ GUI toolkit:

  #include <nana/gui.hpp>
  #include <nana/gui/widgets/label.hpp>
  #include <nana/gui/widgets/button.hpp>

  int main() {
      nana::form form;

      nana::label label{form, "Hello, <bold blue size=16>Nana C++ Library</>"};
      label.format(true);

      nana::button button{form, "Quit"};
      button.events().click( [&form]{ form.close(); } );

      form.div("vert <><<><weight=80% text><>><><weight=24<><button><>><>");
      form["text"] << label;
      form["button"] << button;
      form.collocate();
 
      form.show();
 
      //Start to event loop process, it blocks until the form is closed.
      nana::exec();
  }

This is not perfect IMHO; for example, I don't really like the confusing div string with the many < and > signs. But you can put this in a text editor, build it with `g++ -I/path/to/nana/includes -L/path/to/nana/libs -lnana` - and it will just work, on various platforms. No secret sauce, no need for a bunch of IDE dialogs or any special configuration or action.

[jcelerier]

Here's a quick port to Qt (except for the <> thing which I did not really understand after a cursory reading of its docs)

    #include <QtWidgets>

    int main(int argc, char **argv) {
      QApplication app{argc, argv};
      QWidget widg;
      QVBoxLayout form{&widg};

      QLabel label{
          R"(Hello, <span style="font-weight: 600; font-size: 16pt; color: blue;">Qt C++ Library</span>)"};

      QPushButton button{"Quit"};
      button.connect(&button, &QPushButton::clicked, [&widg] { widg.close(); });

      form.addStretch(0.1);
      form.addWidget(&label);
      form.addStretch(0.7);
      form.addWidget(&button);
      form.addStretch(0.2);

      widg.show();

      app.exec();
    }

Builds with

    g++ example.cpp -I/usr/include/qt/ -I/usr/include/qt/QtWidgets -fPIC -lQt5Widgets -lQt5Core

Here's also how the two programs behave in practice: https://streamable.com/brltmc

tl;ds: now that I saw it in action, I know I can instantly ignore anyone who says that nana is a suitable replacement for Qt.

[alibarber]

There is a wide world of applications and development that don't have anything to do with the web.

The films you watch on TV or at the cinema were not created (edited, VFX) using a web browser for a start, and the User Interfaces to those applications are pretty Graphical by anyone's definition...

[hnbad]

As a counter point: plenty of desktop software embeds web technologies these days and even AAA games occasionally use them. I think Battlefield was a prominent example for React being used in AAA games for UIs. The Horizon TV streaming box also had a UI written in React (rendering to canvas for performance using their custom Chromium build I think, but they wrote it so the UI could also be rendered to the DOM so they could use it in their web version).

Not disagreeing with what you said, but "not having anything to do with the web" isn't as clear cut as it used to be and web technologies are increasingly showing up in unexpected places.

[jcelerier]

> The films you watch on TV or at the cinema were not created (edited, VFX) using a web browser for a start

to add on this, the reference UI toolkit for building VFX tools is Qt. Maya, DaVinci, Lightworks, Nuke... are all Qt-based.

https://vfxplatform.com/