[Pythonmac-SIG] Why is Framework build of Python needed

[Kevin Walzer]

Ronald Oussoren wrote:


> And to be honest, I even have doubts about a toolkit such as Tk which 
> uses native widgets but has a rather un-mac feeling unless the developer 
> really knows what he's doing. That explains why IDLE looks ugly on OSX, 
> I don't know what I'm doing w.r.t. Tk on OSX, and AFAIK Python's stdlib 
> doesn't even ship with all components that are needed to get a proper 
> native L&F with Tkinter.
>

Ronald,

You've done terrific work getting IDLE to work with OS X. A lot of the 
work that needs to be done with IDLE modernizing its interface simply 
can't be done at a platform-specific level.

There are two interesting developments that will affect Tkinter in the 
near future:

1. The ttk themed widgets will now be part of the Python standard 
library starting with 2.7 and 3.1 
(http://gpolo.ath.cx:81/projects/pyttk/). Guilherme Polo did this as a 
GSoC project. I believe IDLE will be using the new widgets as well. That 
will help a great deal.

2. A port of Tk to run on top of  Cocoa instead of Carbon by Tk-Aqua's 
maintainer, Daniel Steffen (with support from Apple), is now 
substantially complete: see 
http://github.com/das/tcltk/tree/de-carbon-8-5. It's still currently a 
fork/branch of the main Tk development, and probably won't be committed 
to the main line until later (perhaps Tk 8.6, which may not be out for 
another year), but it works beautifully. I'm currently testing a 
four-way universal build of Python and Tk-Cocoa. IDLE looks a bit weird 
because of some menu layout issues (there are a few differences between 
Tk-Carbon and Tk-Cocoa), but those can be adjusted with some patches--I 
may work some up at the appropriate time.

Thanks,
Kevin

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