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masfoobartoday at 3:23 PM2 repliesview on HN

I do find this an interesting project. I don't think it will serve my purpose as i'm already comfortable with my chosen text editor.

I think many developers/programmers have already picked their poison - what advantages would switching to Ned have? Would newcommers try it.. or resort to VSCode, NeoVim, etc.

Not suggesting it's wrong or a waste of time. Certainly not! I am always happy to see various alternatives out there in various sections of computing... even the likes of GNU Hurd still keeping itself going!

There has been projects where I've been very tempted to use IMGUI as it is an easy/quick approach than building a website or commonly known GUI managers. (WPF, Qt, Gtk, etc)

The problem is - these projects are not about creating text editors, but some GUI Windows (or Windows) that solves problems with check boxes, buttons, and text areas. The problem is ALWAYS when the customers says "Ooh.. it would be good if we can do this!" which, for example, is supporting a Map.. like Gmaps.. which can be supported on the web or on traditional UIs easily.

Do I have the time to support a new feature? Unfortunately.. I dont! I end up using the tools or libraries that DO have these features available. In this example, I can just put together a website using Leafletjs.

Long story short.. as much as I would love to use an Immediate Mode UI to solve a problem... it sounds like a great idea... until it isn't.


Replies

oneseventoday at 4:03 PM

This is based on the Dear ImGui library/framework [0]. It's not intended, strictly speaking, for standard desktop applications. It's intended for applications that use 3d rendering, like games or CAD.

Although you could certainly use it as a desktop editor if you wanted to, I think the real value is in embedding.

[0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui

thomascgalvintoday at 5:12 PM

Writing a text editor is like writing a compiler; the point isn't adoption, the point is in the learning