My review as a C++/QML user.

[Thiesius]

Hello

I was wondering if the project has any public feature roadmap or if the project needs is mostly driven by the customers?

I have recently started a project in QML (as a beginner). Yesterday I have also tried Slint to see what it offers as an alternative.

You can find my "findings/review" below. 😄

Few points about what I loved about Slint compared to QML:

• How easy it was to set up the project. For my test it was super easy to understand.
  I could imagine easily porting my app to the Slint build ecosystem.
  In contrast, I think that Qts documentation regarding some concepts is somewhat lacking:
  e.g. how to deploy plugins, what are prefixes etc., how to link the components together to make it work etc.
• There are't ten different ways to do the same thing. In QML, there are some deprecated ways to achieve the same result. It's hard to know which one is the best practice.
• Language Server and preview. I use CLion as my IDE and although the Slint plugin in CLion is not official, it worked like a charm,
  and was very helpful. I didn't have to check the documentation all the time. I tried preview only a little, but it was nice pleasant experience.
  Setting Qt Design Studio to work with my project was much more difficult and QML language server in CLion is kinda buggy.
• Models seemed fairly straightforward. It seems that setting up the models in QML requires more work. Then again I have tried only
  very simple project in Slint.

Few points about what I was missing in Slint compared to QML:

• Missing an option to have "multiple" @children or any other similar "component" placing mechanism.
  Like ability to set header, content, footer. Although these are already tracked issues.
• This is related to previous point, but for example I cannot create a reusable window component BorderlessWindow, and then
  set the AppBar in the inherited component -> the AppBar needs to be placed directly in the component that inherits Window.
• Accessing the "functions" of the component directly from the .slint files. E.g. the Window in C++ has set_window_position, or set_maximized etc., but I cannot access them from the Slint file. I need to create a callback in the .slint file, bind it in the C++ and then call the desired function.
• The Qt has a lot of useful components like FileDialog. I had to use Qt Widgets to achieve that with Slint. I'm not even sure how would I introduce my custom FileDialog type to .slint files if I wanted to (sort of like what QML_ELEMENT macro does in QML)
• I was generally more used to keeping all simple UI related logic in the QML files. Slint doesn't seem to offer that much yet.

And at last as a C++ developer I do not know how to write Rust so this brings a great deal of uncertainty to me. When I encounter a problem in some library, I often fix that myself - even non-trivial issues - as I usually don't want to wait months for the fix. Not sure if I would be able to do the same with the Rust 😅

Anyways I would still recommend Slint to my friends and colleagues especially for simpler desktop things. Even more so for beginners as I would say QML has much steeper learning curve.

Well done!

[hunger]

Thank you for your feedback. It is very much appreciated.