What GUI toolkit looks the best?

[Dave Brueck]

Edward wrote:
> > > > It's not clear that wxWindows really actually works.
>
> > > Isn't that last sentence a bit overly FUD-ish?
>
> > Umm.  Maybe you are right.
>
> After sleeping on this question, I think not :-) True, my choice of words
> wasn't the best, but since you brought up FUD, I'm willing to discuss my
> fears, uncertainties and doubts about wxWindows.
>
> Motivation & experience
>
> The typical FUD campaign is driven by ulterior motives.  I have no such
> motives --I am not the author of a product that competes with wxPython or
> Tkinter

Well, I'm not really interested in pressing the issue (I don't have ulterior
motives either ;-) ), but if not FUD, it was inaccurate in the _general sense_
as many applications are built upon wxWindows/wxPython and do not have
problems. I do not doubt that you've experienced problems with that framework;
but I do take issue with the implication that such an experience is the norm -
for example, the wxWindows site has quite a list of examples that use it, and
many of which are quite widely used and certainly not toy applications (AOL
Communicator, Audacity, etc.), so I'd say it _is_ clear that it "actually
works". I have a hard time understanding how wxWindows could be so flaky and
buggy and yet still enjoy such commercial and open source success - why aren't
the people who use it drowning in support calls/emails?

> In my experience, it is a _fact_ that wxPython (really wxWindows) seems to
> have many more bugs than Tkinter.  It is a _rare_ bug that has no
> workaround, so this fact does _not_ mean that it is impossible to produce
> "working" apps with wxWindows/wxPython.  What is probably _does_ mean is
> that it will be more expensive to create a solid wxPython app than one would
> hope.  In my experience, the answer to the question "Why the hell hasn't
> wxPython become the standard GUI for Python yet?" is: "wxWindows is buggy."

The good news is that the wxWindows and wxPython developers are pretty good
about fixing bugs, so there's a good chance that all the bugs you found and
reported to them have been fixed by now. ;-)

It was good talking to you. Congrats on your progress with Leo - pretty neat!
-Dave