[Tutor] Choice of GUI builders

[johnf]

On Wednesday 02 January 2008 06:56:54 am Michael Langford wrote:
> While some people are Adobe haters("They hate the web...etc"), I think
> a slick alternative available now is Flex2 calling python via XMLRPC.
>
> I've been doing so lately. It is fast to pick up and makes slick
> looking GUI's rather quickly. It has a cheap GUI builder that actually
> works if you don't feel like just typing out MXML files. You can use
> Apollo to do desktop apps and just Flex to do web apps, and all the
> controls are the same. (The difference is a build setting and a change
> to a couple tags, and voila, desktop app is on the web or vice versa).
>
> Bruce Eckel (the thinking in Java Guy) has written an article on this
> Approach: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=208528
>
> The ActionScript module I'm currently using for XMLRPC:
> http://code.google.com/p/as3python-xmlrpc-lib/
>
> You don't really need to know any ActionScript to do this. Very little
> is required to marshal data in and out of the controls. Other then
> that, everything is python!
>
> Flex is open source now, so you even have that going for you. And it's
> actively maintained (and updated) by Adobe. The install on a client
> computer is easier than with wxPython as the GUI toolkit, and I've
> done several wxPython apps that needed installers. The python back end
> to all this is SimpleXMLRPCServer, which is also, very easy to use.
> Exceptions even work well (a big surprise for me). And the fact this
> approach is cross platform, for "platform" being defined as Windows,
> Linux, Mac, Firefox, IE6, IE7 and Opera, makes this a great choice for
> a easy UI toolkit.
>
>          --Michael
I have been very interested in the Flex solution. Mostly because it supports 
both desktops and the web. I use Dabo for my UI solution and found it covers 
most everything I need at the moment.   But I have real concerns regarding 
data access using Flex.

Flex is asynchronous and most desktop data app's are synchronous when it comes 
to accessing data.  All I have been doing is reading about Flex so maybe 
there is a solution I am not aware of.  It sounds like you are working with 
Flex - is there a solution?

-- 
John Fabiani