progress bar

[Dave Brueck]

Hoang wrote:
> > Try Venster:
> > http://venster.sourceforge.net
> >
> > IIRC the test_coolbar.py script includes a progress bar.
>
> I wonder what possessed someone to start another GUI framework.  Aren't
> there more than enough existing ones?  The reasoning for it wasn't
> immediately apparent on the web page.

Well, the intro you read said:

"Venster is a highly native Windows GUI toolkit for Python based on the ctypes
ffi library. The aim of Venster is to be a very lightweight wrapper around the
standard Win32 API, making it easy to write slick windows applications in pure
Python. "

Being very lightweight is a big deal compared to many other frameworks. I
include Venster in one of my applications and it weighs in at under 100KB. If
size of download / installer is important, this is a real win compared to the
multi-megabyte size of most other frameworks - the entire application (Python +
Venster + app) is shipped in a 1.3 MB cab file.

The other thing worth noticing from the intro is that Venster is pure Python.
Because of that it's very easy to extend and you avoid all sorts of build
hassles because there _is_ no build.

IMO the main downside of Venster is that it is not yet as mature as other
frameworks, so programming in it is not nearly as highlevel as, say, wxPython.
Still, there's a number of places where it's a good fit already - at my company
we recently started using it in a new application where the UI is either done
in Flash or in a few dialog boxes, and Venster creates the Window to host the
UI, does the dialog boxes, and handles the events generated by Flash - it'd be
overkill to have to include all of wxPython just to get that functionality.

-Dave