Hi,
I have problems finding any, so quick question:
Is there a recent blog post/article/presentation/etc. about the current state of Crystal on windows?
And the same question for state of GUI in crytal?
If anyone has any links, that would be great :)
To be honest, there probably aren’t many people who have a clear overview of Crystal’s GUI libraries for Windows. You might already be one of the most knowledgeable people on this topic.
As you probably know, I’ve been spending some of my free time working on uing, a binding for libui-ng. But honestly, it’s still nowhere near a level where I can confidently recommend it to others.
Looking at libui-ng, I’ve come to realize that building a simple, lightweight, and truly cross-platform GUI library is no easy task. In reality, it takes the approach of providing three separate libraries—one each for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu—that look similar but are different under the hood.
libui-ng might often be seen as “old and poorly maintained,” but if you aim for a native, lightweight, cross-platform GUI, this kind of approach is almost unavoidable. And since this approach is already very challenging, even if some talented new developer were to take on this problem again, I doubt the result would be significantly different from libui-ng.
That said, with the recent advances in AI, which can integrate experience and knowledge beyond what any single person can achieve, it’s possible that an AI-driven solution might emerge—one capable of handling the complex integration and maintenance that requires deep expertise in the Windows, Mac, and GTK APIs.
Currently, the most commonly used libraries are gtk4.cr and crystal-imgui. While neither is lightweight, they have a solid track record. I think the key point is how well they actually support Windows.
(Translation from Japanese by ChatGPT)