Python and Qt+KDE

[boud at rempt.xs4all.nl]

"A.M. Kuchling" wrote:
> 
>         (I'm looking into GUI alternatives to Tkinter, having looked
> at PyGTK, but haven't yet examined PyKDE to any significant degree;
> comments on it would probably be helpful for many people interested in
> writing desktop apps in Python.)

I've just decided to go with the pyKDE bindings for the application I'm
developing (on linux). I've looked at tkInter (+ pmw), pyGTK, wWindows,
Wpy, XForms, CGI, and the old kdebindings from python.org. 

The old kdebindings were obviously not up to date, although they were
nicely structured and not very memory intensive. CGI can't deliver a
complex interface, XForms I couldn't get to work. Wpy is based on the
Microsoft Foundation Classes, which since I only work in VB on Windows
isn't a plus from me, and doesn't seem to be very complete or
full-featured. WxWindows was rather nice (and portable), but rather
complicated to install. The documentation is very reasonable. Gtk is in
so rapid a development that it would be difficult to decide which
version to work with - and I didn't think much of the framework as
presented by the example applications. TkInter looks nice - as can be
seen from Grail or PySol - but is rather underdocumented.

The KDE bindings are rather complete, and the documentation Troll
delivers for Qt is very good - and useable with the Python bindings.
I'm currently working my way through the KDE tutorials, translating from
c++ (which I don't know much about) to Python (which I am learning
quickly).  The KDE bindings are a bit heavy on the memory - but that
issue is being addressed. Qt has some great widgets. The KDE + Qt
framework is very nice to work with, in my opinion, and the resulting
applications look good. And the maintainer of the pyKde bindings
reacted very quickly to some questions I had.

This is just a description of the way I reached the decision to
go with KDE - and I might have made mistakes along the way, so
your mileage may vary, of course. All disclaimers apply.
-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt