Cross-platform GUI development

[Eric Brunel]

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 06:34:14 +0200, Michael L Torrie

You do have
to take pains to make the app "feel" native, though. Like follow the UI
guidelines of the platform, etc.

You're absolutely right; I just wanted to add a precision: it's true for
every toolkit, not only Qt...

 

[Kevin Walzer]

"crappy", "waaay better"
I will not feed the troll...
Pygtk on mac just do the work for me on a more than satisfying way.

If that's the case, good for you. If your application is open-source,
then perhaps it's not unreasonable to expect your users to adapt to the
way you do things--and there are enough Unix-savvy Mac users who won't
be put off by an X11-based app. (Heck, I use Gimp and Inkscape all the
time!) However, if you want to develop your application commercially,
*very* few Mac end users, even Unix-savvy ones, will pay for an
X11-based tool. I know I've opted not to purchase WingIDE, for instance,
because it's X11-based (PyGtk in fact) and because I can find plenty of
Mac-native programming tools. The interface quirks of the free Gimp are
tolerable because Photoshop is several hundred dollars, but I am not
willing to pay a few hundred dollars for a commercial tool that has the
same interface glitches.


Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com

 

[Kevin Walzer]

"crappy", "waaay better"
I will not feed the troll...
Pygtk on mac just do the work for me on a more than satisfying way.

If that's the case, good for you. If your application is open-source,
then perhaps it's not unreasonable to expect your users to adapt to the
way you do things--and there are enough Unix-savvy Mac users who won't
be put off by an X11-based app. (Heck, I use Gimp and Inkscape all the
time!) However, if you want to develop your application commercially,
*very* few Mac end users, even Unix-savvy ones, will pay for an
X11-based tool. I know I've opted not to purchase WingIDE, for instance,
because it's X11-based (PyGtk in fact) and because I can find plenty of
Mac-native programming tools. The interface quirks of the free Gimp are
tolerable because Photoshop is several hundred dollars, but I am not
willing to pay a few hundred dollars for a commercial tool that has the
same interface glitches.


Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com

 

[Diez B. Roggisch]

"crappy", "waaay better"
I will not feed the troll...
Pygtk on mac just do the work for me on a more than satisfying way.

I should have worded more carefully, it wasn't intended as trolling. Sorry
for that.

But the point I wanted to make still stands - the native look of OSX is very
distinctive. So if it's anyhow possible, I'd recommend using PyObjc +
native Cocoa.

Yet as the OP asked for Cross-platform, the Qt-gui is pretty close,
especially with Qt4.

And I'm sorry to say so, but GTK within X11 looks very alien to the regular
OSX user.

I personally don't mind that (using inkscape & gimp) - but I wouldn't impose
that on my users. And not only for the looks, but also for the lack of
integration with the OSX windowmanager.

Diez

 

[maco]

Qt doesn't look very native on my desktop. In fact, Qt apps have always
looked out of place on a Gnome desktop.

On Windows and Mac, no question, they look pretty native. You do have
to take pains to make the app "feel" native, though. Like follow the UI
guidelines of the platform, etc.

GTK (like Pidgin or the GIMP) looks pretty native on Windows to me.
Years of using Windows is probably why I think GTK/GNOME looks better
than Qt/KDE.

 

[Chris Mellon]

GTK (like Pidgin or the GIMP) looks pretty native on Windows to me.

This can only be because you don't use these programs often, or you've
never actually looked at them. The GIMP in particular has almost
nothing in common with the native controls - it's got a different
background color, a different drawing model (note nasty delayed
repaints when resizing), clearly non-native dialogs like file pickers,
non-standard menu icons, just a huge list.

Pidgin has a fairly minimal interface so it's flaws are less obvious,
but they're still there.

If this doesn't bother you, more power to you, but don't make the
mistake of thinking that GIMP is any way "native" on windows.

 

[bramble]

This can only be because you don't use these programs often, or you've
never actually looked at them. The GIMP in particular has almost
nothing in common with the native controls - it's got a different
background color, a different drawing model (note nasty delayed
repaints when resizing), clearly non-native dialogs like file pickers,
non-standard menu icons, just a huge list.

Pidgin has a fairly minimal interface so it's flaws are less obvious,
but they're still there.

If this doesn't bother you, more power to you, but don't make the
mistake of thinking that GIMP is any way "native" on windows.

In the end, GTK+ is themable, and it's a free software project, so if
the MS Windows port has warts, anyone can come along and polish it up
for that platform.

 

[bramble]

I'd recommend wxPython over those becase

1) native look and feel on all platforms
2) doesn't require expensive licensing for non-commercial apps (QT)
3) Isn't a pain to install on windows (GTK)

That said, times change and 1-3 may have changed since I last looked
at it!

My impression has always been that a number of people use wx because
of its API similarities to some MS Windows GUI toolkit or other.

 

[Chris Mellon]

In the end, GTK+ is themable, and it's a free software project, so if
the MS Windows port has warts, anyone can come along and polish it up
for that platform.

There's been plenty to say about this in the past, so I will be brief:
Being able to use the native theme API is necessary but not sufficient
for native look and feel. Gtk doesn't even try for anything other than
a cursory attempt at "look", and as far as I know doesn't have any
real interest in doing so.

I don't have any problem than that, but I don't like people
misrepresenting what you get from using Gtk.

 

[bramble]

There's been plenty to say about this in the past, so I will be brief:
Being able to use the native theme API is necessary but not sufficient
for native look and feel. Gtk doesn't even try for anything other than
a cursory attempt at "look", and as far as I know doesn't have any
real interest in doing so.

I don't have any problem than that, but I don't like people
misrepresenting what you get from using Gtk.

Sorry, I didn't mean to misrepresent GTK+. I clumsily jammed 2 ideas
into one sentence: one, that theming can mitigate some issues with
differences in L&F ("look and feel"), and two, that it's free
software, so contributors can try and make the L&F more native if it's
really that big a deal.

One reason I'm not crazy about wx because I don't like the idea of
adding yet another API layer into the mix. Wx seems quite large, and
if issues arise, debugging a GUI that calls another GUI does not seem
like a fun way to spend your time. Anyhow, my opinion is, pick one
good enough native GNU/Linux GUI toolkit that the community can
somewhat standardize on (and GTK+/PyGTK seems to fit that bill pretty
well), write your apps in that so they run really well on GNU/Linux
distros, and *then* get your apps running on secondary OS's as-needed.

 

[Sion Arrowsmith]

[ GTK is ] free
software, so contributors can try and make the L&F more native if it's
really that big a deal.

But the people who care about Windows native L&F are not the people
with the resources (time, money, probably experience) to address
this issue. And the people who do probably don't care. If you're
developing an app where it matters, it's much easier to just go with
the option that gives the right L&F out of the box.

One reason I'm not crazy about wx because I don't like the idea of
adding yet another API layer into the mix. Wx seems quite large, and
if issues arise, debugging a GUI that calls another GUI does not seem
like a fun way to spend your time.

I used to maintain a couple of commercial wxPython apps which were
only ever meant to run on Windows, and the native L&F was the
primary driver behind the choice of wx. Because Linux is my
development platform of choice, I wound up trying to run them there
as well. For a supposedly cross-platform library, it required a lot
of porting effort. And, as you say, when things go wrong it's
difficult to know whether to lay it at the feet of wxPython, wx or
GTK. (And then bear in mind that GTK is layered on top of X....)