Which GUI?

[Steve Holden]

ndev42 at yahoo.com wrote:
> 
> In article <N6ls4.7489$al3.98760 at newsc.telia.net>,
>   "Fredrik Lundh" <effbot at telia.com> wrote:
> [...]
> This accumulation of layers helps us programmers ship libraries
> and development tools fast, but they certainly do not help out
> the users in the end. Just to get a "Hello world" button with
> Python, you need Python + Tkinter + Tk + Tcl + X11, whereas
> you could have short-circuited that to Python + X11, if an intelligent
> widget set was built directly from X11 in Python. Not just binding
> the X functions, making OO widgets and Python compatibility, too.
> A next step could be to provide the same OO widgets, bound to
> other low-library window libraries on other OS's. That is some
> effort, I realize, but looking back at how much has been spent on
> making free GUI tools already, looks pretty small.
> 
Of course, you would create these widgets to conform with the appropriate
look-and-feel for each platform to which you were porting?  Generally,
the amount of effort required to build a portable GUI layer is CONSIDERABLY
greater than "some".

> Every time a new layer is added, new compatibility issues are brought
> in. Plus: if you did not develop all the layers, you have to support
> any change in other people's code to keep compatible. Any layer that
> becomes drastically incompatible with a previous version of itself
> propagates this property to the rest of the assembly. This becomes
> a true nightmare when you have several generations of software to
> support on the same machine.
> 
Configuration control has always been a b**ch in complext systems.  It
isn't likely to get any less complicated.

> Oh well, just my 5c I guess...
> --
> Nicolas
> 
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.

Let's be clear: you are complaining about the complexity of your
environment, not the complexity of Python's GUI support.  IMO, the
Python builders took a very sensible decision to use an existing
GUI toolkit, and while I agree some of the implementation details are
plain ugly, fortunately they are hidden below the abstraction we use
to access them.

regards
 Steve
--
"If computing ever stops being fun, I'll stop doing it"