Thanks, those are good points and on my mind. The logic started getting hard to
follow in longer callback sections. Using the `:` command syntax the eye
doesn't have any context between actions or UI descriptions.
I sorta like the `proc click() =` since it makes that distinction a bit
clearer. Making a declarative DSL for UIs is tricky since you're inherently
mixing multiple abstractions at once. :-)
I think figuring out things like how do you describe layout vs logic in a clean
valid declarative Nim syntax is more important than the engine in some ways.
Apple's SwiftUI is declarative too and has been interesting to follow as
they've struggled to build it out.
That said the Fidget model is to build the graph and render it every time, but
only when an event triggers a render. It's like immediate mode but more
efficient since you only re-render on events unlike in ImGui.
The Fidgetty DSL is built on top that model to _try_ and create re-usable and
customizable "widgets". I can create useful apps with it now! However I have a
bit of writers block because there's a few parts that are nagging me..
The main remaining issues are:
* handling mouse events with layered widgets like menus, dropdowns, ...
* automated grid style layout
* binding variables (mixing ref's of the widget state vs var args in the
procs)
Handling mouse events sort of needs to be done in a tree model after computing
the layout to best handle cases like overlapping nodes. That'd be a breaking
change to the Fidget model though. I'm partly there however by using callbacks
for Fidgetty `onClick` handlers instead of templates.
The other big one is the same thing Owlkettle had with the `Button
{.add_left.}` where you want to do grid style layouts and say "this widget
should be left" without cluttering up the widget's own api. I dislike the
HTML/CSS model where you have to wrap your actual UI elements in `<box
class="flow-left"><my-actual-item>...` or whatever. I sort of ended up with
that in the `Theme(warningPalette()):` section. Particularly it's annoying to
have to indent/un-indent a whole block just to change the color. I'd like the
DSL to be more like:
@withTheme = warningPalette()
Checkbox(label = fmt"Click {self.myCheck}"):
checked: self.myCheck
Run
There is an auto-layout constraint engine in Fidget, however it's difficult to
use without a UI tool to build it for you. However I don't use Figma. I'm
mostly interested in automated layouts.
