GUIs - A Modest Proposal

[Arndt Roger Schneider]

Terry Reedy schrieb:

> Ant
> I agree that the current tk situation is not completely satisfactory. 
> In particular, the IO facilities are inadequate and have not, to my 
> knowledge, changed in a decade. Image input formats are limited. There 
> is no canvas output as an image. (Output of the canvase display list 
> as a dialect of postscript that not everything can read is not a 
> substitute for this.)
>

Hah, You are ill-informed.
tkpath 0.3 contains a surface element, which renders vector graphics 
elements
in an off-screen tk image.

Forget postscript!
Generate SVG from  a tk canvas or --better-- from tkpath.
Jeszra (from me) generates SVG. There is also a SVG export
package available in python/tkinter, search the tkinter wiki.

> However...
> I think it important that Python come with a minimal IDE that is 
> adequate for someone like me doing Python-only development. I thank 
> the programmers of IDLE. So merely deleting tk/tkinter is not an 
> option. Indeed, having something similar to and at least as good as 
> IDLE for any candidate gui replacememt should and I think would be a 
> requirement for consideration.
>
Yes, use emacs or vim, without any GUI.

> The problem with the big gui application frameworks are that they are 
> too big. The two I have glanced at -- wx... and qt -- have much more 
> than gui stuff and duplicate parts of the Python stdlib and other 3rd 
> party libs.


The question is:
What sort of devices are being used by
*normal* computer owners in the near future?

My guess: It wont be a Desktop Computer.

Will any big GUI-Framework work on those devises?

No!

Will a light-weight GUI-toolkit being ported to these
devices ?

Perhaps, but not likely.

Will any scripting language run on such devices?

Perhaps, but not likely, if then it will be
Ecmascript or a 4GL.

Will SVG run on thoses devices?

Yes, it must, because SVG is an integral part
of OEBPS, and the tiny implementation is already
part most mobile phones. Take a look at SVG for
BlackBerry for instance.

>
> As for a small gui written in Python, you seem to have ignored the 
> link to pygui. Of course that has its own problems. Among others: it 
> is incomplete; it ignore Python 3 (requires 2.3+ should be 2.3 to 
> 2.6), which is the only place it could be added; the api sytle is not 
> standard in Python (get_xx and set_xx methods instead of direct access 
> or properties); and there is nothing yet like IDLE.
> What would be required is a Python3 GUI project with multiple 
> contributors.
>
> Terry Jan Reedy
>
What sort of GUI project?


On the initial proposition:
Grapical design is art and art requires an artist.
A community cannot work like an artist. The best a
community of top-class *graphical designers*  could produce
would be of mediocre quality.
 
-roger