umgui - new GUI version of our current command line utility

[madonuko]

um is currently just a command line utility, but pragmatism is one of the core values of Ultramarine. Having a proper GUI version of um is our next step towards that.

Naming

While umgui is the codename, we need to have a human readable name for better UX.

Internal suggestions:

• Ultramarine Control
• Ultramarine Control Center
• Lazurite¹

We will choose "Ultramarine Control Center" for now but this could subject to change in the future.

Technical Details

• Language: Nim
• Framework & Toolchains: owlkettle, gtk, and libadwaita
• Past examples with this setup: netto, hop, umupgrader

We would like this GUI application separated from the command line tool. This should be created in a subdirectory named umgui/.

We're fine with either atlas or nimble.

Use the official owlkettle repo (netto is using my fork for libhelium support, which is not needed here).

Optional challenge: interop between nim and go described here. If we don't want to deal with interop, just shell out using osproc. Examples of osproc can also be seen in the aforementioned past projects.

Design

As a rule of thumb tab the app into different pages (separate page for um status, um tweaks, um paste (#10)), avoid too many dialogs.

Internationalization

Use gettext. Can either try https://github.com/Parashurama/nim-i18n or do something like libnm.nim to obtain interop for gettext from C. Place translations under umgui/po/.

Footnotes

1. quote from roachy: "It's what the color ultramarine is made of, so it's kinda like you're making your own Ultramarine by tweaking it." ↩

[nothingneko]

System Tools may be a good name for the app in the menu, per usual whoever makes it gets to codename it

[GildedRoach]

System Tools may be a good name for the app in the menu, per usual whoever makes it gets to codename it

We came to the consensus that this is way too close to System Settings on KDE.

[nothingneko]

that is an issue...

[Owen-sz]

A couple other things:

• Would be awesome to get this packaged in Terra as soon as it's ready https://github.com/terrapkg/packages
• The wiki currently has a page on umcli, since umgui will be separate, this page will need some work, probably want a single page to encapsulate both? https://wiki.ultramarine-linux.org/en/usage/umcli/
• The functionality between the cli and gui version should be the same

[madonuko]

We've decided that other languages and frameworks are also fine, but we recommend the following combinations additionally:

• go with gtk/adwaita/qt
• rust with gtk/adwaita