xaml island Ask if Embarcadero will integrate UWP & WinUI in comming Version of Radstudio

[Die Holländer 90]

On 3/24/2025 at 12:03 PM, bravesofts said:

🔍 Will GUI-Based Development Go Extinct? 🤔

Some argue that GUI-based development is fading away in favor of code-centric or terminal-driven development.
However, the reality is quite different: GUI development is evolving, not disappearing.

 

🧐 Why GUI-Based Development Won't Disappear?

Which version of Comment-AI are you using?

[HemulGM 2]

Use it 😃 for FMX
https://github.com/HemulGM/DelphiWinUI3

[Frickler 16]

Joel Spolsky has written about this some 23 years ago in his famous "Fire and Motion" article. In short, Microsoft "invents" new technology, and while devs try to adapt to that, Microsoft just drops that for a "newer, better" technology. And so on, and so on. 

Edited March 25 by Frickler

[Brandon Staggs 384]

16 hours ago, bravesofts said:

trying to prevent others from using this technology

Oh come off it. Nobody cares if you use it or not.

 

Your posts are so overly verbose and grandiose that even if there is merit in what you are asking for, nobody can find it. In fact, you seem like you are trolling us with AI generated gibberish that almost but not quite seems to be making a point.

 

And I would prefer not to feed trolls.

 

 

[Dalija Prasnikar 1525]

20 hours ago, bravesofts said:

She is well aware of how much I appreciate and respect her, as I have for many years.

Thank you!

20 hours ago, bravesofts said:

However, please do not take my response personally or interpret it as an attack against you.

I would never do that. Disagreement does not imply lack of respect.

 

20 hours ago, bravesofts said:

The claim that my responses are AI-assisted does not bother me at all

It was not meant to bother you. This is why I also put a smiley at the end of my sentence.

 

The point was to bring attention to your posts which are hard to read because of your AI usage. AI can be helpful, especially for communication and I know people who are able to communicate their thoughts better with the help of AI. However, that involves using AI very lightly and mostly for translating and fixing text they actually wrote. When you give AI more freedom to write things for you, the effects will commonly be the opposite. I am finding your posts where you used AI extremely hard to read. They are long and unnecessarily wordy.

 

Another problem (not that relevant here and now) is that when one can clearly recognize something being AI generated more than having some light AI touches, one cannot be sure whether you are actually discussing something with a person or merely an AI. Are the points and arguments used really the ones that the person has tried to make or it is just something AI put there? It is hard to have a conversation in such situations.

 

20 hours ago, bravesofts said:

What truly angers me and pushes me to respond harshly, especially on this particular topic, is the elitist mindset that some people have—trying to prevent others from using this technology. I am firmly and strictly opposed to anyone who stands against people's freedom to use AI or who spies on their private activities using third-party tools to "expose" them for using AI, as if that were somehow unfair.

Nobody is trying to prevent anyone from using AI. You are free to use it all you like. I am not sure what you mean by spying or using third party tools. I am neither spying on you, nor I am using any tools for AI detection. 

 

20 hours ago, bravesofts said:

I find this mindset absurd—especially when you see platforms like Stack Overflow banning AI-generated content for questions and answers!

As a Stack Overflow moderator, I have seen first hand the huge amount of damage AI can cause. The amount of posted AI answers there (where vast majority of them are completely incorrect AI slop) is not measured in thousands. It is measured in tens and hundreds of thousands. There are users who posted hundreds and even thousands AI answers. Imagine how much more of such posts would be there if AI would be allowed there. The site would be overflowed with AI. The only reason why AI is forbidden there is to preserve the site as repository of knowledge and a place where you can go and get help from actual experts in their field. Unfortunately, the only means moderators have to fight such influx of AI answers is to remove all and every one where some AI usage is detected (even when it is used merely for translating). We cannot easily distinguish between post which were fully AI generated and ones that were merely improved by AI. On the scale of Stack Overflow, with only handful of moderators removing AI, we cannot judge the correctness of each and every answer.

 

21 hours ago, bravesofts said:

Integrating WinUI components will not take significant time away from Embarcadero’s core focus.

Unfortunately, it would. You cannot add feature without removing the time needed to do implement said feature, from something else. That means less improvements in already used frameworks (VCL and FMX), less bug fixes, less IDE improvements. Embarcadero is not Microsoft, nor Apple, nor Google. They need to pick what they will do carefully to maximize benefits to all customers, which means focusing on the things that cannot be easily provided by 3rd party.

[MichaelT 10]

On 3/24/2025 at 12:03 PM, bravesofts said:

 

🔍 Will GUI-Based Development Go Extinct? 🤔

 

🔥 Delphi will remain a powerhouse as long as it continues to adapt and evolve! 🚀

 

So I see. Metallica did it's job pretty well. I didn't want to start another one of the *very useful* 'is Delphi dead discussion'. Doesn't work that way.

 

For some situations I already figured out some song lines that describe what happend. Let's assume a command-line program having to cope lots of load and finally delivers a short dump that's ... that's ... from my beloved Alissa from Canada nowadays, 'Sweet amnesia. Here to free you. As the (memory) pages burn'. Take any of the song line and they will match the situation. All your trails, solved by (F|ire) does not mean, that I'm advertising/advocating Remobjects Fire IDE on the Mac. Metaphors ain't perfect. The books you written no longer exist. The future is in your pen. Ink to paper, now begin. That's about what very likely has to be done. once situation described occurred. (As The Pages Burn, Arch Enemy).

 

Delphi is AdaRocks, think of safe array access and such things. That's a simple one.

 

When I'm debugging Indy stuff for example the Environment is the ICAR-BIA-LB and the user is Fluffy (Packet). Intelligence Community AdaRocks - Bunnies Intelligence Agency - LitterBox is about hitting the fist breakpoint after having pressed F9 or waiting after having forgotten to remove calls requiring synchronization from the OnDisconnect Event Handler of the TCP Server. Debugging Packages is a job for Hoppy Package.

 

That's just fun and techniques applied from the time of the 1960s movements to overcome censorship these days and nowadays in the E.U. as well as the AIs involved. In a tree by the brook there's a song bird show sings, .... 'Oh it makes me wonder'.  That's an easy one, about Mrs. Sparrows EMB San Francisco Marketing. Fell free to find matching song lines that match the situation at the days when words had to meanings. Hint: It's about fire on one hand and an ape on the other, nowadays known as FMX

--

Even if I may sound like Dirty Harry, guy you made my day. It seems that you are the one with machine gun and a finger on the trigger.

 

My reply talked about both GUI centric development and creating GUI applications designed this way with the help of a designer.

 

The origin of the comparison btw. Delphi an VB is a classification scheme of programming languages allowing to taget applications of a certain complexity. VB and Delphi were very close and Delphi allowed to address more complex applications these days. Delphi' strength was about having the source code at hand and no separation of those or no real need to separate both who built the components on one hand and use/apply it on the other.

 

That never changed. Not saying that there is anything wrong with mid sized applications but there is still a history of C and C++ on Windows and Mac for example that dominates the vast majority of the developers and decision makers.

 

Phpstorm for example was already great at the time of AI not even on the horizon and pretty useful in order to somehow get through other people's code originating from the times of PHP 4. That code analysis feature finally sealed it's success and nothing else, except from a few features introduced earlier that the competition did for professional developers who preferred Mac and Linux.

Btw: Apps was the name of the folder for small applications and utilities under OS/2. Even that is nothing new.

No doubt that Delphi as well as RAD Studio are still great. Just wanted to clarify.

Edited March 26 by MichaelT

[Brandon Staggs 384]

I can only imagine how bad AI will be in the future when it is pulling in this kind of garbage text and putting out even more garbage text. Some people dream of AI being able to design new levels of AI. But I think what will happen is AI will just churn out more useless gobbledygook in larger and larger quantities in a feedback loop until all the universe's data capacity is consumed by mounds of useless generated text that is grammatically reasonable but doesn't say a thing. 

[bravesofts 30]

Embarcadero has always focused on making complex APIs easier to use, so adding WinUI support seems like the natural next step. The longer they wait, the more chances they miss to keep Delphi as a top choice for Windows development.

The main subject is going to disappear.

So the big question is—will we see WinUI in the next RAD Studio version? Hopefully! 🚀

Thank you all, and please don’t criticize this reply as AI-generated too! 😄

[hsauro 43]

I remember Embarcadero doing a demo of WinUI back in 2022

 

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/delphi-winui-3-demo/

 

it looked much more complex than VCL or FMX and didn’t seem to be a productive system to use. Just doing a hello world program looks hard

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/how-tos/hello-world-winui3

 

They could make the API easier but to what benefit. As someone mentioned earlier it looks like you can get the same UI look using FMX. So I’m not sure what’s the real advantage is. Plus how long will MS support it until they move on to the next thing. I think it’s better for Embarcadero to spend their resources on making what they have better.

[bravesofts 30]

18 minutes ago, hsauro said:

They could make the API easier but to what benefit. As someone mentioned earlier it looks like you can get the same UI look using FMX. So I’m not sure what’s the real advantage is. Plus how long will MS support it until they move on to the next thing. I think it’s better for Embarcadero to spend their resources on making what they have better.

At the very least, Embarcadero should provide a solid wrapper for the OS compositor’s rendering Layers—both Windows.UI.Composition and Microsoft.UI.Composition—similar to what they did with TDirect2DCanvas.

 

WinUI isn’t just about UI controls. Handling XAML, controls, and manifest configurations based on OS requirements is something that developers can manage themselves—whether through their own development efforts or through community-driven projects that evolve year by year. We will likely see at least some serious GitHub repositories dedicated to WinRT growth over time.. But direct access to the Windows compositor would unlock real native UI rendering, low-level OS services, and system interactions and a TRUE access to core Windows technologies that are otherwise hidden behind the WinRT layer. that aren’t possible with FMX or VCL alone.

 

Without this essential rendering layer, many critical Windows OS services and WinRT libraries remain difficult to access properly in Delphi. Features like deep integration with the Windows Input System, system-level animations, true windowing effects (Acrylic, Mica, Shader effects), media and graphics pipelines, and power-efficient rendering, Devices, Security, Management and more are all tied indirectly to the modern Windows compositor Features. The absence of a direct wrapper means developers must rely on workarounds or limited interoperability with COM-based WinRT APIs, making these essential system features harder to implement and maintain.

 

FMX can't fully replicate a true Windows OS experience, especially with deeper WinRT integration. WinUI isn’t just about the UI—it connects directly to the Windows compositor|system services in ways FMX doesn’t. A proper wrapper for Windows.UI.Composition and Microsoft.UI.Composition would give developers more native power while keeping things efficient.

 

Additionally, clear documentation and practical examples—such as how to initialize a composition surface, interact with system Features, or leverage deeper OS services—would make these capabilities far more accessible to Delphi developers.

 

In the end, I am not an expert in Windows programming, and some of my information may be incomplete or inaccurate. However, there is no shame in expressing my opinion, even if only on a superficial level.

[JonRobertson 83]

On 3/25/2025 at 7:11 AM, HemulGM said:

Use it 😃 for FMX
https://github.com/HemulGM/DelphiWinUI3

There is a lot that can be done by building on the existing VCL framework. One option for VCL applications is StyleControls:

StyleControls VCL

Fluent UI Screenshots

 

StyleControls is a commercial component library. My only association with Almediadev is being an active customer and user of their controls.