[Tutor] Well...

[Magnus Lycka]

At 23:59 2002-12-19 -0500, GREENDAY31087@aol.com wrote:
>-Could someone explain why GUI toolkits such as Tkinter are needed and used?

I'm not sure what you are actually asking here...

Python does not have any intrinsic way of creating buttons,
windows, menues etc. It's not a part of the core language, like
arithmetic and basic file manipulation. One reason for this is
that Python works on many different platforms that are inherently
very different when it comes to user interface issues, and another
reason is to reduce the effort of developing and maintaining the
Python project. It's big enough as it is, and there are so many
GUI toolkits developed by others that it's much wiser from a
resource point of view to use an existing product instead of
inventing the wheel again.

So, some kind of GUI toolkit is needed to create programs
with a graphical user interface like Word, Excel etc has.
Without such a toolkit, or library, you are limited to just
handling communication through interfaces such as just reading
keyboard input or files, and output is limited to writing files
of just linearly printing text in some kind of terminal/console
/DOS-prompt etc.

Of course, this is not the whole truth. For instance, a lot of
progams communicate through computer networks, and you can
create a good user interface by using a web server and letting
the users use a web browser that takes care of the visualization
of the user interface. In that case you don't use a GUI toolkit.

Is this what you are asking for, or are you questioning the
usefulness of the graphical user interface concept?


-- 
Magnus Lycka, Thinkware AB
Alvans vag 99, SE-907 50 UMEA, SWEDEN
phone: int+46 70 582 80 65, fax: int+46 70 612 80 65
http://www.thinkware.se/  mailto:magnus@thinkware.se