ready to use python, need help with GUI decision

[Alan Gauld]

On Fri, 05 Mar 2004 08:32:27 -0500, Ed Cogburn
<edcogburn at hotpop.com> wrote:
> > My personal favourite is Tkinter, with the 'steroids' that go by the 
> > name of PMW.
> 
> Have you also tried wxPython?  I'm not advocating, just want to know if you've 
> also tried "the other one".  :)  

I've tried both and wxPython is more similar in my view to
traditional GUI toolkits like MFC on Windows etc.

Any heavy duty GUI work I do in Delphi and so my Python GUI work
tends to be fairly simple. Since I was already familiar with Tk
then Tkinter is a far easier system to learn. There are fewer
widgets and copious documentation. THe wxPython alternatoive
offers more widgets but less documentation, and much of that in
C++ - and its not as easy to translate as some would have you
believe!

OTOH wxPython does produce slightly nicer looking windows at the
end of the day.


> What does PMW do for Tkinter?  

Add a bunch of missing widgets and dialogs. And again these are
actually documented, even in a book - Grayson's Tkinter book.

AboutDialog, Ballon, ButtonBox, ComboBox(and variants), Counters,
EntryField(inc validation), MenuBar, MessageBar, Notebook(tabbed,
with variants), ScrolledCanvas, ScrolledField, ScrolledFrame,
etc...

> opinions suggesting wxPython was "better" than (standard) Tkinter, but I've 
> never seen PMW mentioned before when comparing the two.  If you've used 
> wxPython previously, how does Tkinter+PMW compare to it?  

PMW closes the gap but if you are in the business of producing
commercial quality GUI apps using Python I guess wxPython would
be better than Tkinter (but not necessarily pyQt/pyGTk).

Alan G.

Author of the Learn to Program website
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld