What is a status of fpGUI and MSEGUI?

[Dibo]

Hi,
I know fpGUI and MSEGUI very well from past times. After 14 years of career I finally have some spare time and want to start some open source projects, last was BGRA Controls and I see that it was forked and successively developed by lainz and circular, thank you guys. My next project require non widgetsets (KDE/GNOME Qt/GTK) so that is a reason of this topic.

I have some questions for Graeme, creator of fpGUI but seems that newsgroup which I always used is not working anymore: http://geldenhuys.co.uk/webnews. Don't know if it is only temporary issue because it was working few months ago but last stable version was released in 2015-09-02

About MSEGUI. Since Martin Schreiber passed away years ago (it was a shock for me, it was in the middle of the project based on MSEGUI so I had contact with him over newsgroup), I see that Fredvs took over the project. Fred, how it is going? Are you handling it well?

[Fred vS]

About MSEGUI. Since Martin Schreiber passed away years ago (it was a shock for me, it was in the middle of the project based on MSEGUI so I had contact with him over newsgroup), I see that Fredvs took over the project. Fred, how it is going? Are you handling it well?

Hello Dibo and I am so happy to read you!
MSEgui is still in the race, and it has become fpc > 3.0.0 and BGRABitmap compatible, it has new targets: OpenBSD, NetBSD, Mac (via XQuartz), plus lots of fixes and new features.
All this thanks to the wonderful and clear code of Martin and the torch taken up by Roland, Sieghard, Alexander, Codedz, Mohamed, Circular, Lainz, other friends and me.

The last release is MSEgui  version 5.10.4. Apr 13, 2024.
But there are some commits after the release so better to take always last source from GitHub/Codeberg git sites.

[Dibo]

It is really nice to hear that. You know what is coming? The Wayland, successor of X11. That is what I'm afraid about fpGUI and MSEGUI on linux

[Fred vS]

It is really nice to hear that. You know what is coming? The Wayland, successor of X11. That is what I'm afraid about fpGUI and MSEGUI on linux

Yes the IBM and RedHat team seems to win to impose their buggy-that-resolves-nothing-obsole-that-breaks-everything wonderful Wayland.
Note that XWayland (the emulator for X11) is working ok (and msegui adapted for it) and will remain for a long time in the Wayland distros.
Andrews Haines has done a prototype for fpGUI but it is not working yet.
https://github.com/graemeg/fpGUI/tree/wayland
I take inspiration of it for MSEgui and explore Wayland with this: https://github.com/fredvs/wayland-pascal
But I feel very lonely and also disappointed by the compositor-war of Wayland, you should write different code for each compositor, it is not centralized like X11.
Note also that Wayland is Linux only (not for BSD).

[Dibo]

Yes, I'm aware that currently there is some kind of proxy between Wayland and X11 on all of linux apps. I can't describe it technicaly but you know what I mean. Soon or later, all apps will change to Wayland. But I'm glad that you and other maintainers of MSEGUI are aware of that. That is very promising of the future of the project and I'm happy that it is still alive

[Fred vS]

Soon or later, all apps will change to Wayland.

Maybe add a Wayland target for their applications but don't forget X11.
X11 is still present in the BSD operating system for a long time, better yet, OpenBSD has taken over and will release X11.so.7, still compatible with X11.so.6 but with mostly all the features and more than Wayland.
Some Linux distributions will use it.

[Fred vS]

Yes, I'm aware that currently there is some kind of proxy between Wayland and X11 on all of linux apps.

A other approach is to use SDL2 as backend for msegui and delegate the complicated gestion of Wayland+compositors to SDL2.
It will offer also to msegui much more targets, like android, iphone, mac and many others.
There is a (old) project sdl4msegui in mseuniverse, updated, but lot of more work has to be done to be complete.
But something works already for unix and windows.
https://github.com/mse-org/mseuniverse/tree/main/sdl4msegui
and
https://github.com/mse-org/mseide-msegui/discussions/94
[EDIT] And the new sdl2 branch: https://github.com/mse-org/mseide-msegui/tree/sdl2

[Nativer]

It will offer also to msegui much more targets, like android, iphone, mac and many others.

I'm very excited that MSEgui may be ported to Android in the future. I think working on graphical frameworks is more promising than platform limited gtk/qt/cocoa widgetsets to support native controls.

[Ozz_Nixon]

Well, I have reached out to Graeme everywhere I could find ... without success.

So, I wrote my own Form Designer... (it generates code compatible with the old Designer...)

Output is compiled on the right to do a SIDE-BY-SIDE


Interested in participating????
https://discord.gg/n4X8BSkM

Regards,Ozz

* Anyone who really knows me, knows, I am not a patient man...

[Graeme]

You know what is coming? The Wayland, successor of X11.

Wait, what? There is a thing called "Wayland".   

I've looked at it, and really don't like it. In the current state, it seems to break more than it fixes, and they dropped so many useful X11 features. 

X11 is not going away any time soon.  [Sorry IBM & RedHat]. It's used in many other Unix-like operating systems. All the *BSD's, Solaris etc. XLibre seems to get a lot of traction too - so that's probably where many non-Linux people will head to. Time will tell I guess.

[Graeme]

Well, I have reached out to Graeme everywhere I could find ... without success.

You found me!   

[Leledumbo]

X11 is not going away any time soon
...
XLibre seems to get a lot of traction too

XLibre is a highly risky choice. At best, you might end up seeing it in Solaris derivatives or NetBSD/DragonFlyBSD, but nowhere else. Even FreeBSD and OpenBSD has a growing, although painfully slow, support for Wayland. X11 might still hold for another decade if not more, but if you don't develop the Wayland interface, then your framework will be very limited by then. But again, time will tell. I seriously have a doubt with XLibre, as its goals conflict with XWayland, which might have better support from multiple distros.

[inky]

i don't see myself ever running wayland.

i use windowmaker, it is an x11 wm, and i use maemo-leste, it uses x11 hildon desktop.

i like x11, many things about it. i don't believe it will ever go away.

well, major mainstream linux distros may not include it.
who cares? i never used those mainstream linux distros.

gtk5 will not support it.

yeah? then even more reasons for me to dislike gtk, and search for pascal only ui solutions, independent from gtk or qt. more opportunities for fpui, fpgui, msegui, or perhaps something else.

[inky]

nothing is "dead" unless a couple of people use and maintain it, care about it.

i myself revived code that don't compile, many times, be it long forgotten wmaker dockapps or nokia n900 programs.