Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?

[Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes]

16 Jul 2001 15:00:27 -0700 in <3b5363fb$1 at news.blarg.net>,
Steve R. Hastings <steveha at animal.blarg.net> spake:
> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes (kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu) wrote:
>>   If what you want is portability, though, Python's probably more
>> portable than Java
> Okay.  I thought Java bytecodes were my best hope for cross-platform
> compatibility... but Python has its own bytecodes, doesn't it!

  Yep, and unfortunately the JVM is only really kept current on
Slowlaris, Windoze, Linux (finally!), and HP-UX (and that through HP's
own efforts).  IBM's various OS's, too, for what that's worth.

  Mac JVMs are iffy, and BSD is behind the times.

  The one really bright side to JVMs is the consistent graphics support:
AWT and Swing work everywhere.  The down side is that it's AWT and
Swing, which are a major pain to work in, and make Tk look speedy and
light on memory usage.

> Suppose I wanted a program to be runnable on platforms like BSD, PowerPC
> Linux, PowerPC BSD, etc. without having to build on each of those.  If I
> were to distribute .pyo files, and users of all those platforms already had
> Python installed on their systems, could I build and distribute a single
> .pyo file?

  Well, one .pyo per module, but yes.  Note that Python bytecode is not
portable between Python versions - if you make it for 2.1, only 2.1 can
read it.  That's about the only major complaint I have, otherwise it
seems to run on everything.  I've tried it on all the systems I have
easy access to: Linux, FreeBSD (didn't try Tkinter there, though),
Windoze, and HP-UX.  Presumably it works on Macs, but I've not tried
them.

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39