SWT and Python (was: Re: What GUI toolkit looks the best?)

[Oren Tirosh]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 03:35:51PM -0500, Jon Franz wrote:
> > > What's wrong with Jython? I haven't used it myself, but have always
> wondered
> > > why it's not mentioned when different Python GUI:s are discussed.
> >
> > Jython + SWT is a pretty cool combination. SWT is a well-designed, high
> > performance portable toolkit using native widgets. Python is our favorite
> > language. If they could be married without Java it would be even better.
> >
> >    Oren
> 
> I use jython + java swing for a large, ongoing contract.  The plugable look
> & feels allow you to add some nice UI skins to your application with 1 or
> two lines of code - I use the 'Alloy' look and feel from incors
> (http://www.incors.com/lookandfeel/index.php) - though it does cost.

I find it incredible that a PyGTK GUI often feels more responsive than many
Java GUI apps even though the Java language is much faster than Python.
AWT and Swing are largely responsible for Java being perceived as slow
even when the core language is now on par with C++ for most tasks. SWT is 
fast. SWT has a native look because SWT *is* native. Skins should not be 
the responsibility of the application. A native GUI will take on whatever 
skin the host windowing system uses. 

SWT has been ported from Java to C# for the SharpDevelop project. I wonder 
how difficult it would be to port SWT to Python.

   Oren