what would you like to see in a 2nd edition Nutshell?

[Alex Martelli]

RM <ny_r_marquez at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Alex Martelli wrote:
> > I still
> > believe Tkinter coverage is going to help more readers.
> 
> Alex,
> 
> I know this can be a can of worms.  But honestly, I wonder what do you
> base that idea on.

Availability, simplicity, stability, to name three reasons.  The typical
middling-beginning programmer who download a good Python distro is going
to have Tkinter available -- otherwise he or she couldn't be running
IDLE, which is probably the best ways for most Pybeginners to start
playing with Python in a cross-platform way.  Putting up a trivial GUI,
which may not LOOK very good, maybe, but still WORKS, is quite simple.
AND, Tkinter isn't going to keep changing under my feet!-)

On the Cookbook site, selecting recipes for the CB's 2nd ed, I noticed
that a vast majority of GUI recipes posted were for Tkinter -- a
_larger_ dominance than at the time the CB's 1st edition was being
prepared.  Accordingly, poor old maligned Tkinter is the dominant GUI
toolkit in that chapter of the CB.  It would be weird to do otherwise in
the 2nd ed of the Nutshell.  If I had space to add a second toolkit,
despite my personal liking for Qt, it would be wx (with PythonCard
coverage, too).  But I don't: I gotta choose _one_.  Not on the basis of
my personal likes and dislikes (not that I particularly dislike Tkinter,
mind you -- but, even IF I did!), but on the basis of what's gonna help
readers most.  And I'm quite convinced that, in late 2004, the answer to
the latter is still: Tkinter.


Alex