Tkinter--does anyone use it for sophisticated GUI development?

[sturlamolden]

wx has also graphical editors like Glade (there is a wxGlade project)
giving a xml description of a window and its cross platform.

If you are thinking about XRC, then beware that this XML don't solve
any problems, it just creates another. XRC and libglade do not compare.
libglade makes the GUI development easy and the program code clean and
easy to read. XRC makes the GUI development difficult and the program
code convoluted and difficult to read.

Also wxGlade is not GLADE. In particular, wxGlade is unstable and tend
to crash or do stupid things. But if your alternative is to hand-code
the wxPython GUI, then wxGLADE is nevertheless the better option.

On the other hand its a pity that there isnt much choice in cross
platform (win mac lin) GUI platforms until now i was a great fan of GTK
but there isnt a proper port for Mac.

GTK is being ported to Aqua, but the port it is in its early stages.

Its also a pity that no one didnt do something based on OpenGL with
python (or maybe im wrong) it could be cool and really cross-platform.

You are wrong. There are PyOpenGL and there is cross-platform GUI and
game development platforms that use it (PyGTK, wxPython, PyGame). There
are also PyOgre, which are more pythonic than using OpenGL directly.

 

[Eric_Dexter]

pygtk can be a pain to install and some of the librarys that are built
on top of it have copyrights and such. apple for the fonts and there
is one for the images. It also can be a pain to install.. It would be
nice to see it as a low cost comercial package that is already put
together say $20 or so then to try to workout a distribution for some
of that. (but then I believe apple should buy borland). I think
sci-pi (If I have the name right) would be a very good platform to
extend gtk. A) it is well documentated B) they made it as easy as
possible to install. pywin might have some acess to graphics but it is
windows only and the documentation is sparce.

http://www.dexrow.com

 

[sturlamolden]

pygtk can be a pain to install and some of the librarys that are built
on top of it have copyrights and such. apple for the fonts and there
is one for the images. It also can be a pain to install.. It would be
nice to see it as a low cost comercial package that is already put
together say $20 or so then to try to workout a distribution for some
of that.

On Windows, there are two installers you need to download: One for
PyGTK and one for GLADE + the GTK runtime. Double-click on the
installers and wheeey ... everything works.

http://www.mapr.ucl.ac.be/~gustin/win32_ports/pygtk.html
http://gladewin32.sourceforge.net/modules/news/

If you cannot make this work, your computer skills are at level that
makes me amazed that you have any use for a programming language...

(but then I believe apple should buy borland). I think
sci-pi (If I have the name right) would be a very good platform to
extend gtk. A) it is well documentated B) they made it as easy as
possible to install. pywin might have some acess to graphics but it is
windows only and the documentation is sparce.

SciPy is a toolset for scientific programming in Python. It does not
contain any graphics stuff. SciPy depends on NumPy (formerly SciPy
core), which is the "bleeding edge" package for numerical programming
in Python. If you need to scientific datavisualization in Python, you
should take a look at Matplotlib, which also depends on NumPy.
Matplotlib can use a number of backends for displaying graphs,
including PyGTK. I routinely use Matplotlib to draw graphs in my PyGTK
apps on MS Windows. This jus requires two or three installs: NumPy,
Matplotlib and (optionally) SciPy. But you don't need this packages
unless you are doing heavy scientific or numeric programming.

 

[Jani Hakala]

For instance, I've developed several Tcl
applications that use the core Tk widgets, the Tile theming package, the
Bwidget set (great tree widget and listbox, which allows you to embed
images), and tablelist (an extremely flexible muti-column listbox
display).

I tried to look for a python-library when I started using
tablelist. The only link I found was quite dead.

I spent a day or two while learning how to do a minimal (i.e. only
those methods that I have needed) implementation from scratch
It seems to work quite well for my purposes.

I've found Python wrappers for some of this stuff, but almost
no documentation on how to use them

Is there sufficient documentation for the Tcl/Tk libraries that the
wrappers have been coded for? At least with Tkinter and Tix it is
usually quite obvious what is the corresponding python method if you
know the Tcl/Tk counterpart.

Jani Hakala

 

[Peter Decker]

That leaves you with wxPython (utterly ugly API, remninds me of MFC and
Motif), PyQt (very expensive unless GPL is not a show stopper) or
PyObjC.

I too hated the wxPython API, but loved how it looked. And since I
need things to run cross-platform (in my case, Linux and Windows), I
held my breath and coded in wxPython, because the results were well
worth it.

Now that I've discovered Dabo, which wraps wxPython, hiding the C++
ugliness under a very Pythonic API, I have the best of both worlds. I
get to code naturally, and the results look great.

 

[sanxiyn]

Does anyone use it for sophisticated GUI development?

I have seen a very sophisticated admin tool written in Tkinter, coming
from SAP. So apparently SAP does.

Seo Sanghyeon

 

[bearophileHUGS]

Peter Decker:

Now that I've discovered Dabo, which wraps wxPython, hiding the C++
ugliness under a very Pythonic API, I have the best of both worlds. I
get to code naturally, and the results look great.

With some cleaning and improving, I think wax
(http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/wax.html ) can become good too.

Bye,
bearophile

 

[Wektor]

You are wrong. There are PyOpenGL and there is cross-platform GUI and
game development platforms that use it (PyGTK, wxPython, PyGame). There
are also PyOgre, which are more pythonic than using OpenGL directly.

I ment in the GUI context , a widget-based api where you can put
buttons, labels etc. on a form.
Not an advanced 3D stuff which is useless for such application.
Something like :
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/glui/
http://glow.sourceforge.net/
and sdl based
http://www.paragui.org/

but none have Python support (or again maybe im wrong)

 

[Neil Cerutti]

I ment in the GUI context , a widget-based api where you can put
buttons, labels etc. on a form.
Not an advanced 3D stuff which is useless for such application.
Something like :
and sdl based
http://www.paragui.org/

but none have Python support (or again maybe im wrong)

PyGame for SDL, I think.

 

[Peter Decker]

With some cleaning and improving, I think wax
(http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/wax.html ) can become good too.

I looked at Wax, but the author doesn't seem to be too involved with
it. It looks like a cool idea that he developed far enough to make it
work, and then got bored with it. I mean hell, there isn't even a
workable grid class that does anything differently than the wxPython
grid does!

Dabo's implementation is already llight years ahead of Wax, despite
entering the game much later. When you've worked with lots of open
source projects, you can tell which are actively being developed and
which are dead or comatose; you can tell which have a growing
community and which are stagnant; you can tell which are worth
investing your time into learning and/or contributing to, and which
are dead-ends. Wax feels like a real dead-end to me.

 

[sturlamolden]

I ment in the GUI context , a widget-based api where you can put
buttons, labels etc. on a form.

You mean GTK?

GTK 2.8 uses an abstraction layer for drawing widgets called "Cairo".
Cairo can use OpenGL or Quartz as backends (still experimental). Thus,
you can get a hardware-accelerated GUI from PyGTK if you are willing to
use an experimental backend in Cairo.


http://cairographics.org/

 

[alex23]

When you've worked with lots of open
source projects, you can tell which are actively being developed and
which are dead or comatose; you can tell which have a growing
community and which are stagnant; you can tell which are worth
investing your time into learning and/or contributing to, and which
are dead-ends. Wax feels like a real dead-end to me.

Can you also tell when you're wrong?

I checked out Wax last week for the first time; I hit a snag and got an
answer from the lead developer within a day, along with a pointer to
the latest dev version.

But don't let communication get in the way of that six sense you've got
going there

- alex23

 

[Peter Decker]

Can you also tell when you're wrong?

I checked out Wax last week for the first time; I hit a snag and got an
answer from the lead developer within a day, along with a pointer to
the latest dev version.

But don't let communication get in the way of that six sense you've got
going there

I've been following Wax for over two years. You can count the number
of new features that have been added to it in that time on one hand.
Hans is a great guy and has written some great stuff, but Wax is but a
small side project of his. I'm sure he'll support it excellently, but
I don't think I would hold my breath waiting for him to him to release
a grid that does, say, 1/10th of what the Dabo grid can do.