[Tutor] Web client programming

[D-Man]

Python is capable of being extremely portable across platforms -- if
you stay away from the stuff marked as only available on certian
platforms (ie. the Posix module, the win32 module, etc).

For the GUI part of it there are several options:
	GTK has been ported to windows (check with the gimpwin team)
	and has python bindings (I don't know if the bindings work on
	windows, but I hope so since I want to use them in the
	future).

	Qt works on Linux and Windows and has python bindings.
	Someone else recently said that using PyQt in windows is free
	since the PyQt maintainer got a license for Qt from TrollTech
	and PyQt is an app which doesn't require you to get another
	license.

	Another alternative is wxPython -- python bindings for
	wxWindows.  wxWindows is a cross-platform gui system that
	basically defines an interface which is then implemented in
	terms of the native gui system.  ie Windows users would be
	using wxMFC which will look like a windows app while Linux
	users can use wxGTK or wxMotif which will make it look like a
	GTK or Motif app.

All three solutions have GUI designers.  GTK has a cool library
associated with it called "libglade".  libglade reads the output of
the Glade gui designer and creates the gui at runtime (as opposed to
the traditional method of generating code that is statically
compiled).  I don't know if it works in windows (it is written in C)
but I really hope so.  If not we could get together and make it
portable (maybe re-code it in python ;-)).


As for connecting to the backend database, I think using the
database's given library for client connections would be the best
route.


HTH,
-D


On Mon, Jan 01, 2001 at 10:50:18PM -0800, David Metzler wrote:
> The client does not want to accept the limitations of a web browser
> environment.
> I am considering a Python client.
> What is the best way to program a connection to the backend sql database?
> What are the other options and why are the problems with them?
> What is necessary to make this code cross platform, IE: Linux, Win98