Gui Advice Needed: wxPython or PyQT ?

[Kevin Altis]

"Just" <just at xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:just-780542.00184607052003 at news1.news.xs4all.nl...
In article <QmWta.92529$K35.2588787 at news2.tin.it>,
 Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:

>> Personally I could care less, but UI experts generally decry the looks
>> that apps happen to have when run with widgets widely different from
>> those they've been designed and tested for.
>>
>> While I'm no UI expert, far from it, I _have_ built UI frameworks in
>> the past -- and if I were to do it again (fortunately quite unlikely,
>> since good cross-platform frameworks now exist), I'd go Qt's route --
>> IMHO, building on top of several sets of higher-level widgets is just
>> too fragile.

>OTOH, *users* generally don't appreciate it if an app's GUI behaves and
>looks differently than the rest of the OS.

>Just

And this of course is the kicker. Certainly as a developer something like Qt
is very appealing, especially on Linux, where users seem to be quite
forgiving or at least have low expectations as to how their GUIs should look
and behave. However, simulated look and feel has repeatedly been shown to be
unacceptable to real users where it matters, so you have to use native
widgets. While you can often come close to right with the look, the behavior
is generally wrong except for the simplest of controls. Even something as
simple as clicking on a window frame to bring an app to the foreground
behaves incorrectly in some Swing apps, which makes me think it is a problem
with the framework and probably at least one reason IBM built SWT. Qt almost
certainly suffers the same kinds of problems, but I'm willing to be proven
wrong.

If you do not care about cross-platform apps, then Qt is probably fine for
Linux, PyObjC is probably great for Mac OS X, but as soon as you want
cross-platform and want native look and feel, wxPython is the only game in
town, despite the extra work you have to do as a developer to deal with some
differences in cross-platform behaviors.

ka