[PYTHONMAC-SIG] Tkinter vs. native calls

Just van Rossum just@letterror.com
Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:51:27 +0100


At 11:54 PM +0200 3/18/98, Fernando Garcia wrote:
>Oops, I think I mispelled my original statement. I didn't wanted to say
>that Python and Tkinter have any problems. BUT what I wanted to know is
>that if python programs for the Macintosh made with Tkinter looks like a
>native Macintosh program, with it's menu bar, standard windows behaviour,
>etc. like any other Mac program (TextEdit, ClarisWorks...).
>
>I'm an experienced Macintosh programmer and have some experience
>programming python on Linux (strange, isn't it?) now I want to adopt python
>for many projects on the Mac, and Tkinter would be great allowing me to do
>just the same on Unix and Mac but I don't want to loose the look and feel
>of the Macintosh standard.
>
>>From the little I have seen until now, Tkinter can include most of the
>funcionalities of the Mac (including menu bar), dialogs, windows... but I'm
>not sure up to what level of integration. That's my doubt.

A Tkinter app will be way too slow on 040 macs, and perhaps still too slow
on low-end PowerMacs.
Buttons and scrollbars are native, but text editing fields don't seem to be
Mac-like enough. It depends on how close you want to get: for simple
interfaces it should look and feel just fine, but in my (brief) experience
it gets quite clumsy to to work with beyond that. Lots of little things don't
behave quite like you would expect. Apparently the situation is similar
on Windows: Fredrik Lundh told me that the reason he wrote Topaz
(a lightweight GUI kit, implementing a subset of Tkinter with native
Windows stuff) was exactly this: Tkinter doesn't get close enough to the
Win look & feel if your demands are higher that average.
I would say, try it out, and see for yourself. Perhaps it does meet your
expectations after all...

Just



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