QT is a cross platform UI development framework, its goal is to look native to the platform it operates on. This video by a linux maintainer from 2014 explains its benefits over GTK, its a fun video and I don't think the issues have really changed.

Most GTK advocates will argue QT is developed by Trolltech and isn't GPL licensed so could go closed source! This argument seems to ignore open source projects use the Open Source releases of QT and if Trolltech did close source then the last open source would be maintained (much like GTK).

Personally I would avoid Flutter on the grounds its a Google owned library and Google have the attention span of a toddler.

Not helping that assessment is Google let go of the Fuschia team (which Flutter was being developed for) and seems to have let go a lot of Flutter developers.

Personally I hate web frontends as local applications. They integrate poorly on the desktop and often the JS engine has weird memory leaks

I've started building a lightweight daw mostly for mixing songs together rather than any actual serious music production. Currently only supports volume and bass envelopes, and dragging tracks around. I'm planning to open source it when it's a bit more polished. It's written in rust and I'm using egui for the frontend.

Google just killed flutter. Just so you know. They do that a lot. Be careful

(Google recently laid off parts of the Flutter team)

and Raylib has a LOT of bindings (ie. not just Zig)

i recommend gtk's libadwaita. it saves alot of time. It has JS Python rust and C bindings.

It depends if you're using Gnome or KDE. If you prefer KDE, use Qt. If you prefer Gnome's interface ideas (that looks quite different), use GTK+ with libadwaita. GTK+ has good bindings for Python, and Rust, and a new, rather Gnome-specific language, Vala.

there seems to be qt qml bindings for Zig

qml is a language made to build UIs, and is very easy to use in my experience - you can build your logic that needs to be high-performance (file loading, audio effects, etc.) in zig, and expose it to qml so it's available in the UI.

i've never used zig, but i did do a similar thing using c++ & qml, and it was great to work with, so i think you should be fine going that route

Happy Qt User here, I was able to make sense of the C++ and Go bindings for Qt really quickly and there's a lot of good resources and examples online for Qt Templates

I've recently used dioxus with rust to build a native app with webview. Way cheaper than electron and the like.

I recommend using qt for the interface, for audio use jack, it is better for music production, if you want to load vst plugins into the program, you can use yabridge

You could use libadwaita

Raylib sounds great. I would avoid gtk/qt. Enlightenment library also there but might not have zig bindings.

I would always go with something cross platform to save you or someone else effort later. I recommend Python to save yourself effort too.

Checkout kivy.

You can try Kotlin Compose Multiplatform.

It can target JVM (windows, Linux, Mac) and then work on iOS and Android.

Android and JVM are stable. IOS is alpha and works well. Should be beta this year.

WASM support is coming as well but is experimental.

You can do as much multiplatform as you want and do as much platform specific as you want.

Compose itself is a declarative UI framework. Your UI is code.

Edit: You do require a Windows, Linux, and Mac machine to build the executables for each desktop JVM app, as well as a Mac for an iOS app. Android you can build on any of them.

What are your needs which aren't being met with flutter? -- It's really just a UI renderer and it has a C/C++/ObjectC/Java underlayer for everything else. It should link fine with existing c libraries. I have done a bit with it recently including desktop dev: https://www.producthunt.com/products/which-browser So hopefully I can answer any questions. -- Hit me up on matrix

It seems that Zig is the intended language? If go where a consideration I would point you at this to consider: https://github.com/go-graphics/go-gui-projects too.