Advice for a novice on making ambitious cross-platform GUI app

[Wildemar Wildenburger]

Chelonian wrote:
> Project:  ambitious GUI program for Win/Mac/Linux.  Target user:
> average person.  App to look elegant, and be intuitive, responsive,
> exectuable, have its own icon, etc.  Needs to store user info in large
> database for the long term, run in the background and pop up at
> assigned times.  There are needs for graphing, data analysis, file
> management, word processing, text processing, web synchronization, etc.
>  It would have to look like commercial software, though it may turn out
> to be free open source.  It's envisioned as a pretty tall order, thus
> my wonder if I'm delusional in thinking I have any hope to accomplish
> this.
> 
This sounds very very interesting. A bit like the app *I* am 
envisioning/writing right now. :)

Can you elaborate a bit more on what kind of App this is supposed to be? 
I'm thinking that maybe if we share common goals, we might join forces.


> Can Python *alone* produce something like what I've described?  Or
> would I have to have some parts written in C?  Or is Python really not
> best-suited to these needs?
> 
Python is great. For everything. (except speed ;))
Look at chandler: Pure python, huge App. Slow though ;)
WikidPad is another example (not as huge). UliPad as well.
There must be more, I just don't know any off hand.


> Is using SPE with wxGlade a good choice?  What about Boa Constructor?
> 
Lots of people use each of those. But if you really want a slick 
(not-so-standard) UI, ditch the UI designer and code it yourself.

I have looked at SPE. Its fine.

Just. Try. ALL.
Then, and only then, shall you know. We can't tell you.

> Is it something one person could do over the course of a year or so,
> working say 10 hours a week on it?  Or is this really out of reach of
> anyone other than a hardcore programmer or even a team of them?
> 
I don't know. I'm on my app for a 3/4 year now and all I have is a 
shabby UI and a basic, if clunky, database engine. Although I must say, 
I had hard drive crash and switched from wxPython to pyGTK to wxPython.

I think it's always a bad idea to estimate how long it will take to do 
some computer related task (Note the generality of that statement.). 
Because the answer is in ALL cases: longer.


> If I write it using Python 2.5 and wxPython, do I have to use py2app or
> something to create an executable and necessary library files so it
> will run on Mac?  (Because of wxPython's libraries, which the Mac
> won't have?).  
> 
No clue, sorry.

bye
wildemar