[Python-3000] back with more GUI planning in a few days...

[Jim Jewett]

On 5/8/06, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> Talin wrote:

> > There are two reasons why I think that bundling a GUI library with
> > Python is a good idea:

> >   -- It makes it possible to include GUI-based tools and applications
> > in the base distribution.

> I agree with this, although how ambitious are such tools? If you're just
> popping a dialogue asking for user input, there are typically other means of
> doing that without bringing in a whole GUI framework.

And what are those ways, cross-platform?

> > But for small tools (for example, a configuration control panel),
> > the extra step of installing a UI framework may be significant.

> I think the reduced friction is less about the installation and a lot more to
> do with which API you use:

It's both.

> Scaling a standard up to complicated,
> integrated applications is a mostly unsolved problem, though.

So accept that complicated integrated applications will need to go
beyond the standard library's offerings, and (almost) stop worrying
about them.

> > One of my concerns about PyGUI ... faced with the
> > complex vocabularity of UI designs, they would rather simplify
> > the visual language than deal with its full complexity.

Yes, because dealing with full complexity is not a solved problem.

There is nothing to prevent a KDE or wx implementation of PyGUI, and
nothing to prevent users who need the full power from using wxPython
directly.  The only thing the standard library should even attempt to
provide is scaffolding for applications simple enough that they don't
need the answers to the unsolved problems.

-jJ