A native application for X11

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. The toga philosophy provide us with a native user interface apps, this is good, but what about if I don’t have a backend native interface, i.e. what if I use a Unix-like OS without any backend GUI like Gtk3+ or Qt backends and just simply using X11. The current implementation does not provide us a backend for this need, i.e. backend that help me to build an app has a minimum requirements backend but provide me with an GUI app.

Describe the solution you’d like I suggest adopting a backend for this purpose like Tkinter or something else that compatible with toga project.

Additional context This will be helpful if I want an app and I want my machine as simple as possible.

[freakboy3742]

It’s true that web apps won’t share the look and feel of your desktop apps - but then, if you’re writing a web app, the desktop isn’t the platform that is being targeted. Web apps are targetting the web - that means they need to expose a UI that is native for the web. This means we need to support web-native features like deep linking, URL-based navigation, and high-level theming through CSS. It doesn’t mean we need to make a web app look and feel like an macOS or Windows desktop app.

The analogy between X11 and Web is also fair enough - they’re both very low level drawing protocols. However, the Web does have the concept of native widgets. To be sure, there aren’t many - but they do exist. There is a native concept of a “Button” in HTML. There is a basic concept of a windows, and panes within that window. And, of course, there’s a native WebView widget… the web is a WebView widget 😃

X11 doesn’t have those primitives. It’s a canvas on which you can issue drawing instructions over a network layer. There’s no such thing as an “X11 Button”. There’s a Motif button, or a Tk button, or a GTK button - but no X11 button.

So - if you wanted to propose adding ‘toga-motif’ or ‘toga-tk’, that would make sense; but ‘toga-x11’ doesn’t make any sense.

I like your optimism that toga-tk would be “relatively little effort”. My experience with Tkinter has been that it has a good, but not great spread of widgets; and when a widget is missing, you’re pretty much out of luck, I wasn’t aware of cefpython - that definitely looks promising on the webview front - but there are other widgets that Toga requires that I don’t think you’ll find analogs in Tk. I’m happy to be proven wrong, though.

Ultimately, if you’re particularly motivated to write a toga-tk backend, I won’t stand in your way, and I’m open to any API suggestions that make alternate widget toolkits more viable. However, I would ask… why? What is your use case here? What audience for an app are you anticipating that has access to a Linux X11 graphical desktop… and doesn’t have a desktop environment that is based either in GTK ( Gnome, LXDE etc) or Qt (KDE)? You say you want an app that is “as simple as possible” - I’m not sure how introducing a widget toolkit that isn’t the platform’s native widget toolkit makes things simpler.

[paulproteus]

Hi @MuhammadMouradG !

I’m hoping to get more info and keep this conversation moving. I’m just a contributor, not a core maintainer, so my opinion isn’t authoritative.

I wanted to share two questions I have about a non-Gtk non-Qt X11 backend for Toga.

Would it implement a substantial number of the Toga widgets? If it doesn’t, then I think it would frustrating rather than helpful to people who write Toga apps.

Would this backend create an app that looks, feels, and works like other apps on your system? The Why Toga? page of the docs says, “You need to feel like a native app.” In X11 without Qt or Gtk, in my experience, there is no consistent look and feel. If there is no consistent look and feel that the Toga app blends in smoothly with, then I think Toga can’t really accomplish its goal.

I would love to know what you think. I’m hoping that we can figure out if the idea of a non-Gtk non-Qt Toga backend for X11 makes sense, and if so, figure out what the next step should be. If it’s not a good fit for Toga, maybe it makes sense to develop outside Toga.