Also skia renderer is written in C++ and uses on platforms like x86_64 and arm64 prebuild binaries, so if you are using different architecture, this library will be build from source, which can take a lot of time and require additional dependencies.
App was created with white fluent theme by default, but is easily possible to use dark theme by setting `SLINT_STYLE` environment variable to `fluent-dark` during compilation
e.g.
```
SLINT_STYLE=fluent-dark cargo run -- --path .
```
Slint supports also other themes, but they are not officially supported by this app and may be broken.
- Suggesting possible design changes in the gui - of course, they should be possible to be simply implemented in the slint keeping in mind the performance aspect as well
- Modifying user interface - gui is written in simple language similar to qml - [slint live preview example](https://slint.dev/releases/1.2.2/editor/?load_demo=examples/printerdemo/ui/printerdemo.slint)
- Improving libraries used by NAME_TODO e.g. czkawka_core, image-rs etc.
- Improving app rust code
## Why Slint?
There are multiple reasons why I decided to use Slint as toolkit for NAME_TODO over other toolkits.
| Gtk 4 | - Hard compilation/cross compilation and bundling all required libraries - mostly on windows </br> - Cambalache can be used to create graphically gui </br> - Good gtk4-rs bindings(but sometimes not really intuitive) | - Hard compilation/cross compilation and bundling all required libraries - mostly on windows </br> - Forcing the use of a specific gui creation style </br> - Strange crashes, not working basic features, etc.(again, mostly on windows) </br> - Forcing to use bugged/outdated but dynamically loaded version of libraries on linux (e.g. 4.6 on Ubuntu 22.04) - not all fixes are backported |
| Qt | - QML support - simplify creating of gui from code it is easy to use and powerful </br> - Very flexible framework <br/> - Typescript/javascript <=> qml interoperability </br> - Probably the most mature GUI library | - New and limited qt bindings <br/> - Big cross compilation problems and hard to setup on non windows platforms <br/> - Very easy to create and use invalid state in QML(unexpected null/undefined values etc.) <br/> - Commercial license or GPL |
| Slint | - Internal language is compiled to native code <br/> - Live gui preview with Vscode/Vscodium without needing to use rust <br/> - Full rust solution - easy to compile/cross compile, minimal runtime requirements | - Internal .slint language is more limited than QML(javascript flexibility is big pl) <br/> - Out of bounds and similar errors are quietly being corrected instead printing error - this can lead to hard to debug problems <br/> - Commercial license or GPL(is available also different ) |
| Iced | - ~100% rust code - so compilation is simple </br> - Elm architecture - simple to understand | - Mostly maintained by one person - slows down fixing bugs and implementing new features </br> - GUI can be created only from rust code, which really is bad for creating complex GUIs(mostly due rust compile times) and this is also </br> - Docs are almost non-existent |
Since I don't have time to create really complex and good looking GUI, I needed a helper tool to create GUI not from Rust(I don't want to use different language, because this will make communication with czkawka_core harder) so I decided to not look at Iced which only allows to create GUI from Rust.
GTK and QT also I throw away due cross compilation problems caused mostly by using C/C++, so only Slint left.