I'm very fond of QML's syntax, so can't quite understand why you don't like it. It has a learning curve, but I studied all the basics in a day (it's just so simple and intuitive, imo).
Not sure how "QML in C++" would look like, but it doesn't sound pretty. Recently someone published a declarative UI inside C++[1] (without a different syntax) but I felt a bit off with this approach. Maybe that's something you mean?
I don’t know how else to explain it that compared to qwidgets where everything can be handled in code. Qml might be all the things it claims , elegance, separation of concerns, simple syntax, etc, but that still doesn’t eclipse my initial issue that it’s an unnecessary abstraction. You might not think it’s pretty but I think it’s pretty to only use c++.
Not sure how "QML in C++" would look like, but it doesn't sound pretty. Recently someone published a declarative UI inside C++[1] (without a different syntax) but I felt a bit off with this approach. Maybe that's something you mean?
[1] https://github.com/brisklib/brisk
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42450963