Hi everyone,
I’m planning to build a Markdown-based note-taking application in Zig with Vim-style editing and keyboard-driven navigation.
I’m looking for recommendations on GUI libraries or frameworks that would be a good fit for this type of project. One of my main concerns is text rendering quality, as the application will spend most of its time displaying and editing text. I also need good Markdown rendering capabilities and support for modern font features.
Some features I’d eventually like to support include:
- Markdown editing and preview
- High-quality font and text rendering
- Rich Markdown rendering
- Multiple panes/views
- File explorer/sidebar
- Vim-style keybindings
- Cross-platform desktop support
I would prefer a Zig-native GUI library. However, I’m also open to Zig bindings or wrappers around C/C++ libraries, as long as the Zig API is well designed and I don’t have to interact directly with @cImport or write C/C++ code myself.
I’m still exploring the Zig ecosystem, so I’d appreciate hearing about the available options, their strengths and weaknesses, and any projects that might serve as good references.
What GUI library would you recommend for a project like this, and why?