<https://twitter.com/lehtimaeki/status/10095024141...

# random

[gildor]

https://twitter.com/lehtimaeki/status/1009502414158868480?s=19

[napperley]

Presumably if Kotlin Native is being used then it will be very interesting to see what toolkit/lib/framework is used for covering the GUI.

[gildor]

yes, exactly my thoughts.
If K/W would be used to implement platform specific GUI then make sense to have some framework to share UI definition across different platform GUI frameworks

[napperley]

This could lead to an alternative path for developing native desktop apps in Kotlin (hopefully using the multi-platform approach 🍀). Imagine the possibilities! 😀

[gildor]

If this is what JB want to do, then would be interesting to know which frameworks targeted. macOS mentioned so UIKit, what about Win and Lin? Still java Swing or also GTK?
For Lin there is no single framework. QT is C++ only, so GTK is only popular option. Or continue to use Swing and JVM
Not sure about WinAPI.

[gildor]

But even 2 framewors UIKit for Mac + Swing for everything else looks really interesting

[napperley]

Can concur - On Linux GTK is the dominant GUI toolkit, even though there are other toolkits being used.

[napperley]

Kotlin Native already supports GTK (both ver 2 and 3 - https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-native/tree/master/samples/gtk ), so JB could head down that path with Linux.

[napperley]

Swing support ends on September 2026 (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/javaclientroadmapupdate2018mar-4414431.pdf). Will become more difficult for JB over time to maintain all their products that rely on Swing (eg Intellij).

[gildor]

yeah, good point about end of support for Swing

[gildor]

but there is JavaFx, it would be much easier to replace swing with JavaFx

[gildor]

also I would like to have support of JVM in a such framework, it allows to build really cross platform apps with consistent UI

[gildor]

JavaFx is open sourced now, so still good option

[napperley]

Unfortunately there is no version of OpenJDK 9 and later that includes JavaFX out of the box 🙁.

[gildor]

But it can be available now separately as I understand

[karelpeeters]

Are they rewriting the frontend of inteliJ?

[tapchicoma]

currently the goal is to write backend and unify it with ReSharper backend implementation (ReSharper backend more and more lags behind). As I understand it from presentation.

[tapchicoma]

Also they may evaluate access to the backend for 3rd party UI implemetations

[tapchicoma]

https://github.com/JetBrains/rd - this is one of building blocks for this topic

[gildor]

Yeah, project Rider works now like this: backend IDE and frontend editor

[napperley]

So this could mean that other Programmer Text Editors (eg Sublime) gain access to better language support (i.e. for Kotlin).

[gildor]

But it requires installed idea and probably non-trivial implementation. Not sure why you need Sublime or any other text editor for this

[napperley]

Some people prefer to use simpler/light weight development tools like text editors.

[gildor]

If you need simple tool (aka no real tooling) why someone need integration with IDE.
But probably it's good way to share features between different IDEs like it happens with Visual Studio Resharper and Rider