Tkinter: The good, the bad, and the ugly!

[Octavian Rasnita]

From: "rantingrick" <rantingrick at gmail.com>
> Back in the early days of Python --when this simplistic beauty of
> programming bliss we enjoy today was just a tiny glimmer of hope in a
> archaic world plagued by dark forest of braces and jagged caverns of
> cryptic syntaxes-- our beloved dictator (Mr. Van Rossum) had the
> foresight to include a simplistic GUI toolkit that we call Tkinter
> into the stdlib. And he saw that it was great, and that it was good,
> and so he rested.


Yes, for that time it was good.

> Life was good, people were happy...but darkness loomed on the
> horizon...

Not all the people were happy because the darkness disappeared partially for some of them and more and more blind people started to use a computer, and discovered that the Tk interfaces are absolutely inaccessible for them.

> The answer is simple. We need a 100% Python GUI. A GUI coded in Python
> from top to bottom. A GUI that is cross platform to the big three
> (Windows, Linux, and Mac). A GUI that not only is easy as Tkinter but
> also a GUI that can be manipulated by the average python programmer. A
> GUI that not only teaches the fundamentals of using a GUI, but also a
> GUI that teaches how a GUI works under the hood


So it should be a kind of SWING library made in Python, right?
It is a good idea, but it should not have the problems of SWING and in that case it would be very hard to do.

First, the interface should look exactly as the native interfaces for each system named, and it should provide the same features, because otherwise the interface would look strange for all the users on all the operating systems.
And of course, it should not only look OK, but it should also follow the accessibility standards for beeing accessible for screen readers also.

WxPython is the best GUI because it is fast, even though it is bloated, it uses the native GUI elements on all those 3 operating systems and a relatively good accessibility for screen readers.

But WxPython still have problems because not all operating systems native GUIS offer the same widgets and features and those features custom-made don't respect the accessibility standards.

WxPython is fast because it is made in C - it uses the native GUI elements of the OS which are also made in C. Would a Python - only GUI have the same speed? If yes, it would be great.

Octavian