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Comment by Jasper_ | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of functionality that a general purpose UI library has that Godot will likely never approach, like support for input methods in text editing.

Productive applications require extremely robust text editing, something that game engines don't spend a lot of time with. Stuff like selection, text input for non-English keyboards, IME popups, that sort of thing. Even RTL text display is usually minimally unsupported.

I also don't know of any game engine that supports multi-window display in any coherent way.

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If you use the Godot editor you'll see it's already sophisticated enough for general purpose UI applications. Of course you can keep expanding the requirements until no software in the world meets them but if you know what you're building then it might be the right choice. The main benefit that you won't get with almost anything else is true control over how every pixel gets actually rendered to the screen. It's able to make cross platform applications which since you're in full control over how they're actually rendered gives you tons of control. Resource utilization is fairly low and again you have full control of the stack so it's as good as you're willing to make it. C# is supported nowadays which gives you access to a mature ecosystem of libraries.

Is it the right solution for all UIs? Clearly not but IMO the UI landscape is a mess at the moment for anyone who wants to be able to build cross platform applications. There aren't really any adequate solutions as far as I can tell.

The Godot editor has a pretty good IDE. It's not VScode/Atom levels of functionality but it's improving steadily.

Looking at the github issues they seem to have made a lot of progress with non-English inputs. Again, not perfect but improving.

Godot 4 is adding multi window support. I would hesitate to judge it until it stabilizes but there's some hope there. It looks good from what we have seen so far.

The rate this engine is improving is incredible, i'm finding a lot of reasons to be optimistic.

The parent poster is referring to accessibility of the applications produced with Godot, not the accessibility of the IDE. Edit: it's not .NET it's C++.

I don't understand, the IDE for Godot is created with Godot.

Thanks, that's the point I was trying to make. It's more clear when you have read the article.

So you think that the Godot IDE which allows code editing will not support robust text editing? I don't know how robust it is currently but there is no reason why it wouldn't possibly support that in the future.

Regarding multi-window, I notice that most electron apps don't support multi-window.

It's not impossible, but apparently very hard.

Would it be possible to write an app in, let's say, Swift + SwiftUI for an Apple device, using the native primitives to render the UI, and use Godot just for rendering the 3d part?

Let's say that you're working on a 3d model viewer or some AR app.

IME do have some uses for games, like for in-game text chat. I think it is reasonable to ask for at least some IME input capabilities in a game engine UI library. It is a must if one wants to make a multiplayer game targeting CJK markets.

Godot is open source. There's nothing stopping people from adding this functionality.

I'd argue multi-window would require a substantial redesign of the graphics layer, so much that the maintainers would be uninterested in supporting it, and consider it out of scope.

I can imagine IME support being integrated, but a giant pain, due to the wide variety of APIs across platforms, the fundamental disconnect in how text input is done in games vs. elsewhere, not to mention the "Linux wars": will you support ibus or fcitx?

So it requires someone to step up and do the work, and don't be fooled: it's a lot of work.

Godot 4.0 recently acquired multiple window support for the editor (which is built with Godot's UI and rendering system) and APIs for applying it to your own games

Just to clarify for those following along. Godot IDE is using the same UI components that you can use in your games. Godot 4 will support multiple windows. They're working on RTL I believe and it actually has a very robust code editor with debugger in the editor. Most of the points being raised here don't seem to be based on actual experience with the framework.

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