using import * with GUIs?

[Mel Wilson]

John Salerno wrote:
> Hi all. Quick question (but aren't they all?) :)
> 
> Do you think it's a good idea to use the 'from <name> import *' 
> statement when using a GUI module? It seems on wxPython's site, they 
> recommend using import wx nowadays, but I wonder if that advice is 
> followed. Also, I'm still reading some Tkinter docs that seem to use 
> 'from Tkinter import *' a lot.
> 
> I understand the danger of doing this, but is it safer in these cases, 
> given the more specific names that GUI frameworks tend to use 
> (sometimes!)? Or should you still qualify all your calls with the module?
More specific?  I dunno, I have trouble thinking of that
huge multitude of names in wx as specific.  Who knows what
in all that might collide with names you devise?

My formative experience came when I was looking at Python
Imaging Library Demo code.  Somebody did a simple call to
open and got returned an entire Jpeg image object.  I knew
that open was destined to take arguments other than simple
file paths, and return things other than simple files, but
it seemed awfully soon.  Then I got suspicious, looked at
the top of the code, and saw "from Image import *"

So a word, too, to people writing demo programs.  Writing
"from mycode import *" obscures which code is actually yours
in the code following.  Kind of defeats the purpose.

         Cheers,        Mel.