Python form oriented library

[Michael Peuser]

Hallo Celeb,

Tkinter looks easy at the first glance, it becomes confusing when you use
more advanced features, and it becomes very easy again when you mastered it
and can use Pmw, Tix and maybe even Fredrik Lundh's WCK in addition to it.
The disadvantages are:

- no convincing GUI-Builder running under Windows (PAGE or Spectix);
ActiveState's KOMODO might be an alternative, but you need the 300 $
commercial version. It is surely not worth that much money.
- output to a printer is virtually impossible (yes I know there something
called PostScript)
- no multi column lists or grid-like widgets. Don't understand this wrong.
You can do *anything* with Tkinter, but it needs a lot of experience. Two
years ago I started with generating a 10x10 array made of Labels and updated
them. It was not fast. Then I changed it to 20x20...... You shall not do it
this way.
On the other hand there are real work horses which make life easy: Text,
Canvas, and most of all the TIX HList.

Especially HList ist something you can do a lot of things with! But - like
nearly all of Tkinter/TIX widgets - they become slow when containing more
than some thousend items (depending of your CPU and RAM or course) ....
But even HList does not let you easyly click to the header for sorting
actions or whatever...

In this thread Pedro mentioned Kiwi, which was new to me, although I think I
have a quite good overview over the scene. This might be interesting but I
encountered a lot of Problems with GTK on Windows. It runs fine on Linux
machines but I never got Glade running on Windows e.g.

I rate Qt very high, though I have limited experience. It is well documented
and there are tutorials. This is because it is the only commercial product
since PythonWorks is no longer available. (Which is a pity BTW). It will do
everything you want! But read the license!

vwWindows (=wxPython) is nearly as good. It is free and a lot of people
working with it. There is newsgroup know-how. Both Qt and vw can print ,
have some drag-n-drop and a lot of useful widgets, especially a
HTML-renderer.

Someone mentioned PyCard which is a good product, but there is only a
limited number of widgets available. You should give it a try because it
supports (no, that is wrong: it can live with) a lot of basis GUIs.;
Generate a 6 column list, fill it with 1000 entries, sort it, and then try
to print some of it.

BTW printing: There is a phantastic product called ReportLab!

Sorry I answered by mistake to the private address yesterday.

Kindly
Michael P

"Caleb Land" <bokonon at rochester.rr.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:pan.2003.08.17.20.21.45.109000 at rochester.rr.com...
> Hello,
>   I'm writing a small business accounting type program where the interface
> is a bunch of forms that represent tables in a database.  The interface is
> usually used completely with the keyboard, but the mouse may also be used.
>
>   The software does POS, inventory, accounting, etc.
>
>   The widgets are mostly text entries.
>
>   Are there any Python libraries that are targetted to this style of
> interface?
>
>   If not, does anybody have references to libraries/resources in other
> languages that might be helpful in designing my own (APIs, design
> documents, etc)?
>
>   I've tried googling, but I don't know exactly how to word my request.
>
> Sincerely,
> Caleb Land
> (bokonon at rochester.rr.com)