[Python-Dev] Drop/deprecate Tkinter?

[Ivan Pozdeev]

On 03.05.2018 1:01, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Wed, 2 May 2018 22:54:04 +0100
> Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2 May 2018 at 22:37, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>>> To elaborate a bit: the OP, while angry, produced both a detailed
>>> analysis *and* a PR.  It's normal to be angry when an advertised
>>> feature doesn't work and it makes you lose hours of work (or, even,
>>> forces you to a wholesale redesign). Producing a detailed analysis and a
>>> PR is more than most people will ever do.
>> His *other* email seems reasonable, and warrants a response, yes. But
>> are we to take the suggestion made here (to drop tkinter) seriously,
>> based on the fact that there's a (rare - at least it appears that the
>> many IDLE users haven't hit it yet) race condition that causes a crash
>> in Python 2.7? (It appears that the problem doesn't happen in the
>> python.org 3.x builds, if I understand the description of the issue).
In 3.x, Tkinter+threads is broken too, albeit in a different way -- see 
https://bugs.python.org/issue33412 (this should've been the 2nd link in 
the initial message, sorry for the mix-up).
The 2.x bug also shows in 3.x if it's linked with a nonthreaded version 
of Tcl (dunno how rare that is, but the code still supports this setup).
> I and others actually suggested it seriously in the past.  Now,
> admittedly, at least IDLE seems better maintained than it used to
> be -- not sure about Tkinter itself.
>
>> Nor do I think the tone of his message here is acceptable - regardless
>> of how annoyed he is, posting insults ("no-one gives a damn") about
>> volunteer contributors in a public mailing list isn't reasonable or
>> constructive. Call that "playing speech police" if you want, but I
>> think that being offended or annoyed and saying so is perfectly
>> reasonable.
> Will all due respect, it's sometimes unpredictable what kind of wording
> Anglo-Saxons will take as an insult, as there's lot of obsequiosity
> there that doesn't exist in other cultures. To me, "not give a damn"
> reads like a familiar version of "not care about something", but
> apparently it can be offensive.
Confirm, never meant this as an insult.

I had to use emotional language to drive the point home that it's not 
some nitpick, it really causes people serious trouble (I lost a source 
of income, for the record).
Without the emotional impact, my message could easily be ignored as some 
noise not worth attention. This time, it's just too damn important to 
allow this possibility.

The module being abandoned and unused is truly the only explanation I 
could think of when seeing that glaring bugs have stayed unfixed for 15 
years (an infinity in IT), in an actively developed and highly used 
software.
This may be flattering for my ego, but if the module really is in any 
production use to speak of, then in all these years, with all this 
humongous user base, someone, somewhere in the world, at some point, 
should have looked into this. I don't even program in C professionally, 
yet was able to diagnose it and make a PR!

---

I'll make a PR with the doc warning as Guido suggested unless there are 
any better ideas.

Meanwhile, I'd really appreciate any response to my other message -- it 
is about actually fixing the issue, and I do need feedback to be able to 
proceed.
No need to delve all the way in and give an official authorization or 
something. I'm only looking for an opinion poll on which redesign option 
(if any) looks like the most reasonable way to proceed and/or in line 
with the big picture (the last one -- to provide a unifying vision -- is 
_the_ job of a BDFL IIRC).

> Regards
>
> Antoine.
> _______________________________________________
> Python-Dev mailing list
> Python-Dev at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
> Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/vano%40mail.mipt.ru

-- 
Regards,
Ivan