PyFLTK - an underrated gem for GUI projects

[Roger Binns]

"aum" <aum at spam.me.please> wrote in message news:pan.2005.11.07.00.23.39.597631 at spam.me.please...
> To me, wxPython is like a 12-cylinder Hummer, with fuzzy dice hanging
> from the mirror, fridge and microwave in the back, and DVD consoles on
> every seat, towing a campervan - absolute power and luxury, giving 8mpg
> if you're lucky.

A word of support for wxPython:

 - It comes with a nice demo app that shows every single supported
   widget and editable code for playing with them so you can tweak
   to try new things.

 - It supports printing, drag and drop and various similar niceties
   on each platform.

 - Mac is a first class citizen (support isn't perfect but it is
   better than "good enough").  The FLTK docs mention Mac a few
   times but usually just Unix and Windows.

 - It fully supports Unicode.  (It looks like the under development
   FLTK 2.0 uses UTF-8 in some places but doesn't look like this
   release is imminent.)

 - There is a half decent HTML widget.  (The FLTK one is only a
   quarter decent :-)

 - You get the native look and feel on each platform and native widgets
   are used wherever possible.  (I can't tell what FLTK does).

 - Various other corner things are covered as needed by more complex
   apps such as audio, ActiveX on Windows, stock icons, online help,
   calendar controls, directory and file selectors, a grid/table etc
   etc

As is usually the case, each developer only uses 10% of the functionality of
the toolkit available, but it is a different 10% for each!  My 10% includes
printing and drag and drop which are missing from most of the toolkits you
listed.  I also insist on native widgets wherever possible.

It is possible to make the wxPython smaller by having more DLLs each with
fewer widgets in it.  That way you will only suck in the ones you use.

I do like that FLTK has the documentation style as PHP where users
can add comments to each page.

Roger