On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 02:55:17PM -0400, LM wrote:
> Another thing I'd want is at least minimal internationalization support
> (enough to be able to handle display and input of characters in the UTF-8
> character set).
Hi,
The only really tough thing with a GUI toolkit (C or anything else) is what you
wrote above: "correct" layout/navigation and rendering of unicode text at near
global scale.
It's so tough that GUI toolkits don't do it anymore. There is only one open source
component dealing with it: harfbuzz, a gigantic pile of c++ cr*p,
microsoft/apple grade. I know coze I did dive into it to code a drop-in
replacement for basic roman scripts (at least harfbuzz has the decency to have
a C api).
There is no open source alternative, and it was maintained at redhat (now IBM)
and is maintained now at google by a full team of permanent devs (I guess the
core devs have been financed for a decade and now have google money to keep
going).
harfbuzz is the unicode layout engine of blink(chrome), gecko(firefox), GTK+,
EFL, Qt, pdf printers/readers, etc, and could be hidden in proprietary OSes or
software since it's a "liberal" license.
That said, C GUI toolkits: I know of GTK+ and EFL. But their SDKs are insane as
it is the norm now with "mainstream" open source software (and it's getting
worse as time goes by).
--
Sylvain
Received on Mon May 20 2019 - 22:00:32 CEST