Sure. Show me how Windows 3.\* supported Unicode, i18n (internationalisation), l...

pjmlp · 2026-03-01T12:21:14 1772367674

If you are so keen in Windows 3.x, remember before standards each OS did its own thing, and I can gladly show you the proprietary APIs used by Windows 3.x.

I imagine you never coded for it.

Ygg2 · 2026-03-02T05:40:03 1772430003

I'm keen on you explaining this part:

     > And yes accessibility and localisation were already a thing in _Windows 3.x_, Mac, OS/2

(emphasis mine)

Because it's the one I used of the things listed, and from my memories, its accessibility was extremely lackluster.

I don't care about API as much as you explaining what its a10n features were.

speed_spread · 2026-03-02T00:15:00 1772410500

None of the things you mention would have been impossible to integrate in native GUI. They're platform features.

Ygg2 · 2026-03-02T05:34:42 1772429682

For someone using a GUI toolkit, there is a massive difference between "invent and integrate your own" and "it comes pre-installed".

I'm saying the reason modern cross platform GUIs are hard is that the developer and user preferences have changed. Developers want GUIs that come with many bells and whistles.

This raises the bar for minimal implementation from - "it will take one guy two weeks to implement" to "it will take a huge group decades of effort to implement."

And that's JUST the implementation. At any point, you also face an adoption cliff. Sure, your super layout engine (SLE) might automatically layout stuff, but Josh here doesn't know SLE, he knows CSS.

speed_spread · 2026-03-02T09:58:29 1772445509

Yeah but whatever the browser provides, the OS can also provide. You don't have to reinvent a browser when you code outside of it. Anyway, this conversation had slipped out of the window. Web app UI programming tools still suck compared to what we had 25 years ago and say what you will, there's NO good reason for that.

Ygg2 · 2026-03-02T13:13:42 1772457222

Which OS? This is talk about cross-platform GUI toolkit.

My point was, "Why X language sucks at cross-platform GUI" is because X isn't JavaScript or TypeScript, and it's not backed by the huge corpo that is Google.

> Web app UI programming tools still suck compared to what we had 25 years ago

Funny. I can think of few examples, namely Flash, Dreamweaver, and Delphi, but that's more rose-tinted glasses than any objective metric. They all did a few things better than the modern web but failed in so many other ways.