Which GUI Library to Use

[Chris Liechti]

Gustavo Cordova <gcordova at hebmex.com> wrote in 
news:mailman.1021068439.22098.python-list at python.org:

> A question:
> 
> Is designing and making a GUI toolkit a'la Tk,
> with only the most basic stuff written in C
> (native GUI interface, speed stuff, etc) and
> the rest written in Python, doable?

so somthing like Java's SWING. the only thing you
need is an area and some drawing functions. i'm sure
it's doable, but...
- you need many widgets, buttons, labels, lists, trees.
  e.g. drawing a foldable tree is some work.

- speed. SWING is rich on components but i never seen one
  program that not made the impression of beeing slow :-(

- userbase. just another toolkit? who's gonna use it.
  you'll need supporters and developers to take off ground.

- layouters. placing widgets by coordinate is painful there
  needs to be some automatic layout mechanism. so you need
  to calculate sizes of fonts, labels, etc. again some work

- you need a good look and feel. best it looks native on
  each platform it runs...

- event system you have to distribute inputs and update
  messgaes

> I can't help thinking that building something
> like that would be very interesting.

ineresting of course. but a lot of work to achieve a usable
level.
 
> Opinions?

i wanted such a GUI kit... i've once played around with VNC 
(http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/) in java (SWING). i made a panel that 
is accessible by a remote computer as well as local with the mouse etc. i 
wanted to do the same thing in python but it doesn't seem to be that easy 
with the toolkits i know.
 
> Would it be worth the effort?

i fear not. but still, if you want to gain experience and have some time to 
spend you can learn much about software design, OO, ...
 
chris


-- 
Chris <cliechti at gmx.net>