[Tutor] To Arc (PIL) or Not to Arc (Tkinter)

[Alan Gauld]

>> I think PIL came first, and apparently depended upon some then 
>> present
>> elements of Python for displaying images.

I'm pretty sure Tkinter came before PIL. Tkinter has been around since
at least Python 1.3, and I think maybe even 1.2.X!
I don't think PIL appeared till about v2.0

But PIL is not, and never has been a display tool, it is about
maniplulating images in memory. How you display them is another
issue entirely.

Tkinter is a wrapper around Tk which was designed (in 1988) as a way
of building simple GUIs around command line tools. Specifically tools
intended to control bespoke bits of electronic hardware. So its
graphical requirements were very limited. Conciseness, small footprint
and ease of use were its primary goals.

And all that is as it should be - separation of concerns is a very
good design pattern. Its a tetament to PIL that the latest version is
1.1.6 which was developed for Python 1.5.2 and still works fine
with Python 2.6! I suspect changes will be needed for v3 though...

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk