[Iup-users] Complete macOS Cocoa support, Wayland support, EGL, SNI tray and more...

[Milan N. <gen...@gm...>]

Hello,

I have been working on this for some time now for my Go bindings here
https://github.com/gen2brain/iup-go, and I do not see any issue with Cocoa
anymore.
There are 60+ examples in the repo, and they all now work correctly. There
is no need for an .app bundle anymore; the .xib files are compiled to .nib
and included in the generated file (there is a shell script for that).
Those .xib files were previously designed in Xcode; there may be a way to
recreate them programmatically, but then again, it could also make it
easier to design future controls.
The menu is now dynamically generated, and the default macOS menu will be
shown even if started from the terminal. Also, the app will properly start
in the foreground even when started from the terminal.
I tested the examples on macOS 14, 15, and 26, as well as on old 10.15.
10.15 is the minimum requirement. Go 1.21 is the last version with support
for macOS 10.15, and also, `brew` can be made to work on 10.15. I don't
think any effort to support older versions makes sense.
I spent a lot of time trying to use the native Tab controls, the new API,
and the old API; everything was minimal and unusable. Finally, the
custom-drawn tabs implementation is now used. I started with ENTabView
(MIT-licensed), and now it is just based on that; it doesn't have any
similarities, but I left a note that it is based on that. Tabs now look
nice, follow the native theme colors, and support all available features,
including some new ones (TABDRAGGABLE).
There are also some Cocoa-specific attributes, like TOLERANCE for IupTimer,
so you can save the user's battery if precision is not that important; then
CONTEXTMENU, which macOS has everywhere - we can use them or disable them
with NULL (sometimes they get in the way).
There is also support for `NSOpenGL` for the GL backend, but I could not
test it in the VM. I do not have real hardware, nor does anyone around me
have Apple hw to test. I would appreciate it if anyone could test and let
me know what is happening. There are just a few steps:

    brew install go
    git clone https://github.com/gen2brain/iup-go
    cd iup-go/examples/glmodern
    go build -tags gl

Only GL examples need `-tags gl`, for all others, plain `go build` is
enough (WebBrowser examples need `-tags web`). You can also install GTK
with:

    brew install gtk+3 pkgconf

Then you can build with `go build -tags gtk` to compare the GTK and Cocoa
implementations. Everything works, but there may be some issues with some
dynamically updated attributes or some edge cases. It really needs a fresh
look from someone else.

There are more changes:

 - GTK now also uses runtime checks for proper backend detection (X11 and
Wayland on Linux). There is a new EGL backend, and I am using it for both
X11 and Wayland. The old GLX backend is now fixed as well; it was not very
usable. I was getting only a black screen with my glmodern example, but now
it is fixed. I use the GLX backend now only for Motif and GTK2.

- The annoying Wayland bug is fixed! It was actually not a Wayland but damn
Gnome CSD (client-side decorations). The calculation for the dialog size
was not correct when CSD is used; that is now fixed. The same app will now
correctly work on both Wayland and X11.
There is one issue with the Gnome and GL examples, though: they run without
decorations. It seems the same option that is needed to draw on the canvas
is the one that tells it NOT to draw the decorations. I lost so much time
with damn Gnome CSD. Here, for another project, I have no motivation to
touch that again. In KDE and all other DEs, it works properly and normally.

 - I added an SNI tray implementation for modern Linux distributions. It is
based on GIO and GDBus, so there are no new dependencies besides GTK. I
extracted the old tray code from iupgtk_dialog to the iupgtk_tray_xembed.c
file. The new implementation is in iupgtk_tray_sni.c.
I have a build tag `xembed` if any user would specifically want old tray
support. You can add a similar build option. XEmbed tray support is
deprecated in GTK3; tray support was removed in GTK4, so some fallbacks do
not make sense. All other distros have switched and support only SNI.
QSystray from Qt is the only one left that supports both XEmbed and SNI.

- GTK now also supports the TABDRAGGABLE attribute

 - Also, for modern Linux, a small but important change: `xdg-open` is now
used instead of hard-coded browser names.

 - The iup_thread.c is fixed; there was some error on exit, double free.
Also, support for pthreads on Apple (and Motif) is added.

- Both GTK and Cocoa will now use themed icons for IupTree icons.

- GTK and Cocoa support a new attribute for IupToggle - SWITCH. When
enabled, the toggle will use GtkSwitch and NSSwitch native controls,
respectively.

- All platforms now support DARKMODE global attribute, and THEMECHANGED_CB
callback. It can be useful to respond to changes, e.g., for an image, a
logo, whatever.

- Motif also did get some love! The issue with icons with a black square in
the taskbar and window is now fixed! Also, Motif did get support for both
XEmbed and SNI tray - because why not! Motif is cool. XEmbed implementation
only uses standard X libraries. For SNI implementation, the plain libdbus-1
is used. Similar implementation to GTK/GIO/GDBus, just a different
library. It supports both dynamic and runtime linking via dlopen for the
dbus library. Basically, that DBus implementation can be used everywhere,
and also for GTK2, but TRAY has no drivers. There are no iupdrv functions
for TRAY.
All the drawing issues with Motif are fixed! Before, it would crash
whenever drawing was used. There is now only one bug I notice, with the
`detachbox` example. Maybe I will try to fix it sometimes, but it is
tough to debug X apps when they just crash with the famous X messages.

- Windows also got some updates. Now TaskDialog is used instead of the old
MessageDlg. Vista is, anyway, a minimal version. TaskDialog looks much
nicer, offers more options, and is a drop-in replacement. But more
importantly, its decorations can be made to follow the modern system theme.
All dialogs, including the new message dialog, will now change and follow
the system and user preferences with decorations.

- And last, but not least, the new Edge Webview2 browser for Windows! I
added an implementation for the Windows 10/11 Edge browser. It follows the
same method as the `webview/webview` library, using a custom loader to find
and load the real library. Because why be simple when it can be so
complicated for no apparent reason? Anyway, there are no additional
distribution requirements; the WebView2Loader.dll is avoided, and the
custom solution handles everything.
The Cocoa WKWebView browser has been heavily updated, along with the
WebKitGTK browser. GTK browser now supports everything via dlopen. I am
using it like that. There is no way to support all the library combinations
across all the different distros and whatnot. With runtime linking,
everything just works. Of course, I also tested with the real linking
without dlopen. All browsers should now have equal features.
Because now both Windows and GTK (when used with dlopen) can return failure
to find the library, they both set the same IUP_WEBBROWSER_MISSING_LIB attr
the user can check.

That is it for now. You can check all changes in my repo. The Cocoa update
is just one huge commit; I didn't bother because everything is
updated. After that, you can follow the changes. You can check my
bind_cgo.go file for CFLAGS/LDFLAGS and pkgconfig config, but besides EGL,
there are no new dependencies (if you use dlopen define for Motif Dbus SNI
tray, or dbus-1 for Motif, then it's new). Just add Cocoa files to your
build system, and that is it, nothing else.

I hope you are interested in adding most of these changes.

Cheers,
Milan