[Edu-sig] Elementary graphics library

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> Just a thought: rather than a new GUI implementation, improving the Python 
> GUI FAQ with lots of this information and pros and cons and so on might be 
> a very valuable effort just by itself. So much of choices depends on 
> specifics and tiny details. For example, I'm fairly happy with wx, but 
> there is this bug with dragging certain widgets under GTK 2.6. And of 
> course, I also want platform independent fonts (and I'm not sure how to 
> get those best, wx uses sizers to get platform independent dialog looks, 
> but the sizes may still vary across platforms). Maybe this 2D, 3D, and 
> Python GUI efforts needs a web site or blog or something? Some place where 
> the nitty gritty details gets hashed out? Might be one already? Kind of 
> like this one for programming languages?
>      http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
> But specific to Python and graphics and user interaction?
>    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=python+graphics
> Might be something to think about if it does not already exist.

To answer part of my question, there was a Python GUI sig but it got 
retired in 1999. And I can't access the archives for some reason (when I 
wanted to see why):
   http://www.python.org/community/sigs/retired/gui-sig/
The link:
   http://mail.python.org/pipermail/gui-sig/
goes to:
"The requested URL /pipermail/gui-sig/ was not found on this server."

There is the ongoing Python Image Processign SIG
   http://www.python.org/community/sigs/current/image-sig/
though I had thought that was more oriented around the specific PIL package.

It seems to me that graphics are a powerful way to show people something 
in terms of education, as well as a powerful way for kids to learn about 
themselves through visualization, so having all these choices made neat 
and tidy on a web site (or log kept up to date) for beginners or educators 
who want to make software seems like a good thing. Presumably the demise 
of Gui-sig suggests it is hard to keep up that sustained level of 
interest? But I know I see questions on this on the Python mailing list 
(i.e. what GUI should I use) all the time. Before this question was asked 
here, I had never really thought about how many options for Python and 
graphics and GUIs there really are -- dozens it seems. So, clearly any 
sort of effort put in this direction (including the original poster's plan 
to make simple wrapper) is going to be in the right direction.

--Paul Fernhout