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

[Adam Skutt]

On Jan 14, 5:17 pm, Albert van der Horst <alb... at spenarnc.xs4all.nl>
wrote:
>
> I really don't follow that. You need a tremendous set to write gimp.
> Obviously you won't write gimp in Python.
>

You need a tremendous set to write /the majority of the applications
on your computer/.

On my desktop right now, I have running:
* Google Chrome
* TweetDeck
* PuTTY
* Pidgin
* Game for Windows Launcher
* Free Download Manager
* Steam Client
* A Windows Control Panel Window

None of those applications could be written with his proposed widget
set, he's literally 0/7 on running applications.  If the situation
isn't the same on your computer then your application usage is highly
unusual or you don't understand what widgets are used to construct
your applications.  You've just told me that Python would no longer be
suitable for constructing the majority of GUI applications on the
planet.

> Now you want to jot together three cooperating screens to specify
> some properties for say bluetooth. The proposed set is ample for
> that, no?

Yes, but why would I ever do such a thing?  Such things are provided
for me by the operating system already, pretty much regardless of
platform.  His widget set is quite truly only good for OS utilities,
but I already have those.  I generally don't need nor want more of
them.  Neither do Python users, because the majority of us aren't
writing OS utilities.

That leaves the logical equivalent of traditional terrible, awful
Visual Basic applications left, and even Microsoft gives them a full
widget set (and "real" programming language) now in VB.NET.  The
effort involved in segmentation doesn't make things any easier and
doesn't save them, the library authors, much of anything.

> Such things make up a substantial part of the applications
> as far as numbers is concerned. They are probably written by
> people who don't want to dive very deeply into GUI.
> (Maybe they are more bluetooth experts than GUI-experts, what
> would you say?)
>

I could list every application on the my computer and make a table of
which ones would be workable given the list above, but I can already
tell you that the answer is, "Not very many, and most of the ones that
can were written by MS".  And I'm entirely ignoring issues like
theming as well.  Adding a few additional layout controls would expand
the list a moderate deal, but that's going to be true pretty much
regardless of which 3 or 4 additional widgets you pick.

And this ignores the obvious, "You'd still need a full WxWidgets
install in order to build the minimized set, so all you've saved is a
few .py files" part of the argument, which is just as compelling, if
not more so.

Really, if you believe the case to be otherwise, I truly believe you
aren't paying attention to your own computer(s), or don't understand
how the applications you use are constructed.  What's out there isn't
interesting, it's what people use that's interesting, and people tend
to use GUIs that are moderately to highly complicated.

Adam