GUI Toolkit API? (was: Tkinter and wxPython)

[Rocco Moretti]

Timothy Grant wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> I have seen the GUI wars here, and have for the most part
> ignored them. I am now in a situation where I need input.


DISCLAIMER:  I have never used any of the Python GUI toolkits.

Which toolkit to use? Personally, I don't care. This should not be taken 
as me being callous.
I mean it in a deeper level, as in "What difference is there, really, 
between the toolkits?"

For a simple app, probably none (at least functionally). Open window, 
pop dialog box,
hook a function to "OnClose" signal; you're doing pretty much the same 
thing.

So for simple apps, "Which toolkit?" is really a false choice.

Complicating things is that toolkits are not nessassarily portable: 
someone mentioned that Qt is
free on Linux, but you have to shell out money for the Windows port. 
Even if they are availible
for all platforms, if someone doesn't have that toolkit installed, they 
have to install it before
they can use your program.  This may not be an issue for major programs, 
but people will think
twice about using a (small) program if, in order to use it, they need to 
hunt down the
toolkit package.

In all, it's possible that people (especially newbies) may throw up 
their hands and say "forget it".
(And then jump ship to Visual Basic because you can easily create 
"actual" programs instead of 
"inferior" DOS mode programs.)

So why can't we make programs that can run under any windowing toolkit?

My idea is to take a lesson from the Pythoneers working with databases:

The database-SIG  came up with a Python Database API which all database 
modules are encouraged
to implement. Nothing strictly prohibits modules from implementing 
additional features, but all the
basic functions are the same, thus it should be minimal to swap one 
database implementation for
another.

The modules that come "batteries included" also include the 'anydbm' 
module, which can determine
at runtime which DBM-style database system to use, transparent to the 
programmer using it.


What I envision is that a programmer with simple GUI needs would program 
in a generic API,
and the program would dynamically determine which toolkits are 
available, and use the appropriate
one. One could even specify your preferences by, for example, passing a 
list: ['Tk','wxWindows',None].

Any thoughts on whether something like that could be made to work?

Note that there is nothing here prohibiting non-generic services (e.g. 
items provided by wxWindows
that Tk does not support), or also providing the "legacy" API.