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

[Terry Reedy]

On 1/16/2011 6:58 PM, rantingrick wrote:
> On Jan 16, 5:14 pm, Terry Reedy<tjre... at udel.edu>  wrote:
>> On 1/16/2011 1:27 PM, rantingrick wrote:
>>
>>> least look at the awesome screen shots here...
>>
>>>       http://www.wxpython.org/screenshots.php
>>
>> I did. Well, they say, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!". To me,
>> these are mostly awesomely ugly, ugly, ugly. Shot 1: Ugly gray field
>> followed by shot2: ugly black on gray. These first two examples look
>> like Windows 95/8 -- ie, 20th century look, not 21st.
>

> remember i had requested that everyone download the beautiful demo and
> only look at the screen shots as a last resort.

You called them 'awesome'. I did not expect 'awesomely ugly'.

Screenshots are the first thing for someone to look at, to see WHAT THE 
APP LOOKS LIKE, and to decide whether one wants to bother to download, 
switch to admin, install, run, and uninstall (and hope that that really 
disinstalls everything). I looked and decided that what I saw (except 
for the Mac example), was too ugly to bother with, at least for now.

One of the criticisms against tk has been that it is 'ugly' compared to 
other other guis. Comparing current tk against the screenshots, I saw 
the reverse.

If the screenshots are awesomely unfair to wx, because they are actually 
12 years old and RD and the wxpython community cannot be bothered to 
update them at least to merely 7 years old, that is their fault, not 
mine for taking them at their presentation.

> #########
> # Shot1 #
> #########
>   This shot shows the most minimal wx GUI, that is, a simple Toplevel
> window and nothing more.

And to me it is ugly compared to a minimal tk GUI.

> ##########
> # Shot 2 #
> ##########
>   This shot merely builds on shot one. Nothing fancy.

And it is ugly compared to the equivalent tk example.

 > However i urge you to download the wxPython
> demo and then give me an honest opinion.

If you think the site is bad, send me a ONE better screenshot, or link 
thereto, of wx on WinXP/Vista/7. I promise to look at it. Then urge 
Robin to update the page.

But until wx is either a serious contender for the stdlib, or I have 
personal need of a modern gui system, or I become curious enough about 
wx, compared to other things I have already downloaded and not looked 
at, I have little reason to spend more time with it. I already know that 
some people like wx and swear by it and have even had the vague idea 
that it somehow should replace tk.

> I'll agree this screenshots page needs an update. However (like me)
> the wxPython folks probably put more time into the demo and thought

If Python developers gave that excuse to not update decade-old examples 
in the doc, you would probably rant about it for a week;-).

Instead, we are updating text and examples as problems are discovered 
and we can get to them. I improved some years-old text and examples just 
last week. 3.2 will have hundreds of other improvements.

>> There are, however, other problems with wx that I
>> have and will point out in other posts.

> Please elaborate, these are free and open forums as far as know...?

There are two issues: some interface to wxwidgets, and wxpython as that 
interface or the base therefore.

As to wxpython: for starters, it is written in Python2, not Python3. It 
is owned by Roben Dunn and he has shown no interest that I know of in 
having it in the stdlib. Given what that would mean in terms of loss of 
control of interface, code style, docs, release schedule, repository, 
and so on, I would not either if I had done what he has done.

A wxinter written for the stdlib in Python3, possibly based on ctypes 
rather than swig or the equivalent, might be a stdlib candidate, 
somewhat independently of the fate of tkinter. But no one has 
volunteered and you yourself suggested that such are unlikely.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy