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

[Aahz]

On Tue, May 09, 2006, Paul Boddie wrote:
>
> My worry would be that if another toolkit were dropped into "pole
> position" to replace Tkinter, and then people ignored it just as much
> as they ignored Tkinter, choosing other toolkits, then this would
> involve a lot of maintenance to keep the replacement relevant (or
> to make it appeal to people) and a lot of education to steer people
> around the toolkit where it doesn't meet their needs. This last part
> is often underestimated, and as I mentioned a few times, you see the
> effects in the Web development subcommunity where an arguably less
> ambitious standardisation effort has given way to seeing who can shout
> the loudest, rather than people giving up a fraction of their shouting
> time to contribute to a coherent overview of where all the solutions
> fit together.

It's not entirely clear to me just how much people *do* ignore Tkinter,
and it's even less clear whether any toolkit can avoid the fate of
Tkinter.  I think we should focus on whether it makes sense to have a
standard GUI API for Python and which of the available APIs is most
Pythonic.  After that, who cares?

I believe that Python has received a lot of leverage out of the existence
of Tkinter -- if nothing else, the fact that even some experienced
developers rely on IDLE is a signifier of that.  So I am opposed to
removing Tkinter unless it is replaced with something better, and from
my POV, "better" is mostly defined in terms of ease of creating a decent
GUI application *in* *Python*.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."  --Richard Bach