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by BoingBoomTschak 385 days ago
Once Qt is properly accessible in Rust, I think your claim will be a lot more realistic. This goes for other important C/C++ libraries (e.g. libavcodec, vips/ImageMagick, VTK) without a solid (maintained, documented, etc...) Rust interface.
1 comments
tialaramex 385 days ago
Qt is a C++ kitchen sink library - perhaps it feels very important to C++ programmers but I can't imagine Rust people are looking forward to having more redundant types that do exactly the same thing as a type they've used for years but like, now with a Q in their name.

The fact that lists like yours so often end up being "Look at all these C libraries" ie not actually about C++ at all is revealing. It's an endorsement of Bjarne's position that he needed that C compatibility, decades later C++ alternatives remain unpopular but it also tells you that you're never going to raise the bar this way. C++ is not a route out.

AFAIK there is no equivalent of rustls-openssl-compat for C++. The knowledge that this library (OpenSSL) is trash never spurred any C++ programmers to do better and provide the same ABI but with a C++ implementation.

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BoingBoomTschak 385 days ago
What's your point? There's a lot to criticize about these libraries, but the fact remains that they're considered important and basically impossible to rewrite from scratch. Of course, Rust could get a rock solid portable GUI toolkit that doesn't rely on a webview (probably not much harder than wrapping Qt, to be honest), but it's not there yet.

I'm not in love with them or the abomination known as C++, if that's what you're implying.

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ogoffart 384 days ago
> Rust could get a rock solid portable GUI toolkit that doesn't rely on a webview [...], but it's not there yet.

What would you say is missing in Slint?

> probably not much harder than wrapping Qt, to be honest

There are already Qt bindings for rust (cxx-qt, qmetaobject-rs). What's missing from these?

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tialaramex 385 days ago
> basically impossible to rewrite from scratch

How so? This definitely needs at least a citation of somebody who can explain in detail why this code is "impossible to rewrite". Who wrote the one we have now, Martians?

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