[Python-ideas] Method chaining notation

[Andrew Barnert]

On Feb 23, 2014, at 16:36, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

> Andrew Barnert wrote:
>> Unfortunately, none of the major GUI libraries was
>> designed primarily with Python in mind, so we have to adapt.
> 
> Yes, but the adaptation can be in the form of wrappers that
> make the API more Pythonic. It shouldn't mean warping
> Python to make it fit the ways of other languages.

But remember that there is an advantage to Gtk, Qt, etc. having their own language-agnostic idioms. They have a hard enough time documenting the whole thing as it is; if they had to write completely different documentation for C, C++, Vala, Python, .NET, etc., we just wouldn't get any documentation.

Of course there's also a disadvantage. PyGtk code doesn't look very Pythonic.

I think the suggestions in this thread for a language change that allows people to write code that looks like _ neither_ Python _nor_ Gtk is a bad solution to the problem. But there is a real problem, and I understand why people are trying to solve it.

So what is the solution? Maybe the best thing people can put their effort into is a higher-level, more Pythonic wrapper around the most painful parts of the PyGtk wrapper (like initialization)?