[tracker1]

I think it's funny how many xml based UI frameworks have been made over the years that are better composed better than html with more strict rules and consistency that are continuously overlooked at times.

I would like to think that for some UI projects that things like XAML(WPF/Silverlight) or Flex(Flash) would be some of the first things to reach for... IIRC there are similar tooling for building for GTK and QT applications. Why build your own?

[hugoamnov]

I have a simple answer but it may not suit you :

After spending quite some time writing UI, I believe doing it in either XML or HTML is just pure madness.

UI is a very complex structure with complex wiring and interactions between components, and so it is very prone to human error. To represent such a complex system in anything else than a statically typed language like C++ is, to me, incredibly counter-productive.

You may like to write them in XML, but I want to write them in code and I wrote kiUi just for that. It's more concise, less error prone.

More essentially, I think it comes from a "fallacy" or "false dream" that a designer could design a reactive UI in XML or HTML without knowing anything about code.

The back of the coin, is that to code a real UI you need both HTML and javascript, or XML and another language. XML and HTML are just here for the layout.

But kiUi takes a rather different approach at layout, which is that you may not even need to specify layout in the first place. It's done for you already, but, the designer can still tweak it if needed.

So, kiUi inverted relationship of the primacy of layout over the rest. In kiUi the primacy is to the native code, and to the logical elements (the widgets).

[tracker1]

I think that things like React, and React-Native show the opposite is true... composition of UI elements that are meant to be rendered in relative terms doesn't tend to work out well when you are trying to use absolute measurements in something like C++ with lower-level constructs.

The fact that it is XML is more convention in this case... even with React, it's translated to coded controls via strict rules.. and is relatively easy to manage and reason with.

[hugoamnov]

One thing you misunderstood :

You don't specify any absolute measurement when using kiUi from C++.

The whole point is to get rid of them. They are calculated under the hood.

The style gives the necessary hints. And this is done in a way entirely separate from the UI code itself.

Think of the C++ code doing what is regularly done in both HTML and Javascript, and the kiUi style sheet as what is regularly done in CSS.