One Off the Slack: What's Missing in Compose for Desktop?

Scott asked:

So what parts of compose desktop are lacking compared to compose android?

Google’s Jim Sproch responded:

You tell us! Try it out, tell us what’s missing / needed most.

However, in truth, there are known gaps between the two environments. Drawables and SVG support is one area that is forthcoming, according to JetBrains’ Nikolay Igotti:

SVG icons support is missing, but we plan to fix that

Also, he pointed out that work is still in progress on Web rendering, maps, and stuff:

Some features, such as maps are not available on desktop, but maybe those could be handled with CEF support and showing them in browser

Here, “CEF” refers to the Chromium Embedded Framework, for using the Chromium engine within an app.

Some of the gaps are less about Compose and more about Android. For example, the popular image-loading libraries tend to be tied to Android, so Kotlin/Multiplatform equivalents will be needed.

And the reverse is true in a few cases, where Compose for Desktop is ahead of Compose for Android, such as with scrollbars, as Jim mentioned:

We intend to lift scrollbars into more common code, just hasn’t happened yet. But yes, scrollbars were implemented on Desktop first because they were more critical to the desktop experience.

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