Add Windows XAML UI about areweguiyet

[pythoneer]

Is XAML even possible in the current state?

I think this issue is tracking the current state microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml#2488

[eadordzhiev]

The Windows Runtime API is basically a lightweight COM. The API can be consumed by any language with the C FFI, Rust including.
Microsoft provides official Rust bindings for Win32 and Windows Runtime https://github.com/microsoft/winrt-rs.

The official announcement blog post with a sample project https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2020/04/30/rust-winrt-public-preview/

The proposal you provided is for WinUI 3, which is a custom controls library for the XAML UI.

[pythoneer]

Just out of curiosity what can i build with XAML so far (without WinUI 3). I am a Linux user so i don't know much about the UI story in Windows. I am just curious what the relationship between the two is. Can i build "normal" GUIs with XAML now, say simple buttons, input fields, lists, tree views etc. and WinUI 3 would support more "fancy" elements (i thinks they're called controls?). I tried NWG which is a wrapper around the classic Win32 UI and i would love to spend a weekend playing with it.

[eadordzhiev]

Most of the Windows 10 UI is built with XAML UI, even the start menu and taskbar. You can build pretty much everything, you might not even need WinUI 3 for simple applications. But the upcoming version allows to you controls introduced in newer Windows releases in older, these are backported.
The winrt-rs allows you to consume any .winmd package, WinUI 3 including.

[pythoneer]

Do you have any example (link to blogposts or repos) presenting a simple example, like a label changed at a button click because i am just wondering what this issue microsoft/windows-rs#81 (and the associate microsoft/windows-rs#745) is about. Is it to enable easier usage or working with it altogether? I am wondering what this crate is about https://crates.io/crates/windows-ui/0.7.0 looks like its a placeholder from the owner of windows-rs. I just don't feel like its at a "user friendly" stage with "just" what is available now – but i haven't really looked into it yet and from the first glance i am unsure how to even start (when i try to attempt to build something hopefully this weekend) ... i found this https://github.com/Perlmint/xaml-island-rs-example which may or may not work as a rough starting point.

[madsmtm]

I've added windows-rs in #124 since it is still useful for the lower-level stuff / non-XAML GUI stuff.

If a crate appears that makes XAML / Windows UI development easier, we can add it then.