What I learned designing a barebones UI engine

giveexamples an hour ago | parent | next [-]

rectcut is a good API for layout if you have a fixed viewport (eg eink display)

the API is a very simple one where you slice parts off an initial Rect. the only feature it provides is that it tracks (x, y, h, w) for you.

it doesn't work well with intrinsic sizes - it's more of a top down, fixed size thing.

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mbmproductions 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

author here - thanks for posting :D would love to hear any thoughts or questions.

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socalgal2 2 hours ago | parent [-]

At what point do you think you’d give in and use an existing solution?

I’m going through similar “hell” (my words). I just wanted some simple Ui for WebXR but the dipshits that designed XR for the web fucking threw all the web parts out so you can not just put up a few simple html elements up in XR. You have to write your own UI library from scratch. It’s so mind bogglingly stupid.

In any case, having to write it, like you I started small and the it quickly ballooned because even simple things get complicated quickly, all the while I’m cursing under my breath there is a perfectly unable system but TPTB chose not to offer it >:(

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mbmproductions 2 hours ago | parent [-]

existing solutions for my specific use case were limited, i intentionally wanted something barebones so that I could hack at the raw surfaces / display buffers to cut corners for performance. one part learning experience, one part stubbornness.

WebXR sounds like a different beast entirely. do you have to write your own rendering backend in WebGL for that?

	▲	socalgal2 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Webgl or webgpu, but for ui you can just draw to a canvas and copy that canvas into webgl/webgpu. That means you can easily iterate on the ui system in 2d with mouse input similar to what you’ve been doing in python But, as an example of similar complexity. I hacked together the first Ui I needed. It was 6 buttons and a slider. Then I realized I needed two more Ui panels and started to write more real Ui classes to abstract stuff out and, it just starts getting more and more complicated. A slider needs to “capture the pointer”, meaning as you drag it, if to drag past the end of the slider and the pointer is now over another widget the events should still go to the slider. It’s not hard to implement, it’s just frustrating for me that I don’t actually want to write it. I just want to make my panel and if I could just use html id be done. Instead I’m spending my limited free time making this ui system. I don’t have that much and would be much further along in my actual goals except for this road block