[Python-Dev] What to choose to replace Tkinter?

[Charles G Waldman]

Andrew Kuchling writes:
 > 
 > Careful... while people may try to port GTk+ to Windows, porting GNOME
 > is a different kettle of wax, because GNOME needs GTk+ but also
 > entails gnome-libs

But I was never seriously advocating Gtk+ on Windows.  This was just a
footnote.  I shouldn't have even mentioned the Windows Gtk+ port
because it just muddied the water.

The major point I was trying to make is that toolkits like Tkinter and
WxWindows, which try to delegate to the native widget sets whenever
possible, will succeed, and toolkits like Galaxy/AWT/Swing/XPFE, which
reimpliment all the widgets from scratch, are doomed to fail.  (IMO,
of course).

What I believe we need is a suitable abstraction which uses MFC on
MS-Win platforms and Gtk+ on Unix.  And which also doesn't, due to the
abstraction, take away too many features.  I don't know that much
about MFC, but for a simple example - Gtk+ offers an option for its
canvas widget to do all drawing in antialised mode (by the way, this
is slow but produces very nice looking results).  It would be a shame
if the abstraction layer didn't allow for things like this to be used.

 > This is why, every time this debate comes up, we
 > end up sticking with Tk; it may suck, but all the other systems don't
 > support everything...

Right.  FWIW, in my day-to-day work, if it has to run on MS-Win I use
Tkinter, and if MS-Win is not an issue I use PyGtk.  Fermilab will be
showing some network monitoring software at the Supercomputing 2000
conference next month, and it's mostly all stuff I whipped up a few
days using Tkinter.