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Comment by dsp_person | Hacker News Reader

This would be cool built in a wasm html5 app to whip up a gui in the browser and copy paste the result into your editor.

> It generates and parses C++ code which can be directly used in your application.

Is the parsing part just to read it's own code it generates?

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The parser: https://github.com/tpecholt/imrad/blob/main/src/cpp_parser.h

> Is the parsing part just to read it's own code it generates?

It would seem so. Their hand-rolled parser handles only a subset of the language. E.g. it hard-codes recognition for stl containers, and presumably only the ones that it might emit in generated code.

There's no AST built, at least not at this level. It tokenizes and lexes, and seems to leave it up to the caller to understand how to pump the parsing "state machine".

AST building and codegen appears to be done in this >9000LOC file - https://github.com/tpecholt/imrad/blob/main/src/node.cpp

I've thought about making a RAD IDE for another language, and I'm kind of stuck wondering on strategies for stuff like this, I'd much rather just store the GUI info in another format like XML and only parse source files for things like methods that shouldn't be overriden when someone moves something.

I really wish we'd go back to having a lot more RAD tools.

> This would be cool built in a wasm html5 app to whip up a gui in the browser and copy paste the result into your editor.

Forgot how to install and run native applications? :)

"ImRAD runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS."

Opening up a webpage is easier than cloning a repo, compiling, and running a binary

... if you only do it once.

Okay, for the sake of the argument, let's assume at some point you amortize the fixed costs of native compilation down to zero.

Tell me how running a native binary is inherently easier than opening a webpage?

To open a webpage you have first to run a native binary. So, running a native binary is necessarily easier than opening a webpage.

You are confusing "Number of steps" with "Easy".

They're also the same number of steps. If I tell my OS to open an `html` file, it opens a browser window.

If doing task B requires doing task A first, then doing task A is necessarily easier than doing task B.

I think you're confusing "simple" and "easy". One task vs two is simpler, yes.

The performance and user experience of a native binary is on a whole other level.

It's really not with wasm. Sure, there is a performance difference. It is not a "whole other level".

The user experience is still on a whole other level, not living inside the browser. And the number of times I've used a wasm app, more than once, that actually had some theft do it. Well, I can't think of a single one. So, we will see how well it does in practice.

Wasm is great, but if the goal is to move native applications do the webb it isn't something I look forward to.

which is actually pretty often for a demo!

"You guys do have phones, right?"

> wasm html5 app

That would seem a little anathema to a imgui library aiming to be native on multiple platforms and to have minimum dependencies.

ImGUI generally runs on GLFW and there is even a port to html5: https://github.com/jnmaloney/WebGui

ImRAD appears to be based on GLFW as well so one would only have to follow a tutorial: https://uncovergame.com/2015/01/21/porting-a-complete-c-game...

WebGL2 is a thing now so some of what that blog discusses isn't as bad anymore, in terms of shader support.

Mind blowingly, webgl + Mac + integer textures still don't work afaik.

A multi-platform, minimal dependency project such as this is a perfect fit for targeting wasm, which of course is "just" another platform (not sure what additional dependencies you think it would need?)

it's easy nowadays to compile imgui apps to wasm/html5

examples:

https://web.imhex.werwolv.net

https://floooh.github.io/sokol-html5/imgui-sapp.html

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