Tkinter isn't permanently ugly (was: python applications deployement)

[Mark Roseman]

Yeah, we're definitely hoping to get there soon in terms of 
bringing Tk into the modern era.  As you say, it certainly is
customizable enough... probably so customizable that people 
have been able to make do by tweaking, and nobody has bothered
to go in and fix the default behavior so everyone can take
advantage of it without pain!

With the Tk revitalization work, we're trying to address that.
Out of the box, we want Tk to look more modern out of the box
(no more Motif look), which is mostly achievable now via option
settings but needs to be baked in by default.  Also adding a 
bunch more widgets like comboboxes, since it is ridiculous for
everyone to need to do it differently.

And yes, the tearoff menus being on by default are definitely
on my personal hit list. :-)

Mark
(see http://tcl.projectforum.com/tk/ to help out or just try
 out the latest demos that we have available!)
 


> Hey, nice! Tk is definitely the path of least resistance for me with GUI
> coding, but there definitely is a distinct Tk look that might have been
> fashionable back when Motif was popular but now looks weird or dated to
> most people. However, a lot of this has to do with defaults; on one project,
> I was able to produce a Tk app that looked exactly like a typical Windows
> interface, with IE-style toolbar buttons and everything. Tk is very
> customizable.
> 
> The major deficiencies, in my opinion, are:
> 
>  - way too many ways to make a combobox, the standard one being the
>    ugliest, and the nonstandard ones being difficult to customize and debug
>  - tearoff menus by default - probably sounded like a good idea at the time =)
>  - text areas + word wrap + scrollbar = bizarre
>  - slow rendering (IDLE is a testament to this)