[Tutor] Best GUI toolkit?

[Alan Gauld]

"Christopher Hatherly" <Christopher.Hatherly at anu.edu.au> wrote
> the application I'm after. However I'm now trying to turn my code 
> into a
> (fairly complex) graphical app, and have found both Tkinter and 
> wxPython
> to be much more complex than perhaps they need to be

Both are actually quite simple compared to most GUI toolkits.
But there are certain complexities inherent in building GUIs and
you can't get away from those I'm afraid.

> I read somewhere that BoaConstructor was a good alternative.

Boa is a GUI builder, similar tools exist for Tkinter too - SpecTix is
an example...

> pass on any advice before I leap into it though. Specifically, my 
> app
> needs full-screen display of lots of very simple bitmaps with 
> precise
> control over display timing (synchronising with vertical refresh 
> etc).

Almost by definition full screen display is a non standard GUI 
activity.
As soon as you move away from standard GUI style (a window displayed
within a screen) you add complexity to the task because you are not
working within the usual model. From a usability point of view 
applications
that grab the full screen are considered bad news (the classic example
is game programs which need fastest possible access to the graphics).
If you need that kind of access a games framework might be more
useful that a general GUI framework. But then if you really need that
amount of graphics power, I'd question if Python is the right toool 
for
your task!

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld