How come wxPython isn't in the standard library?

[Roger Binns]

Maciej Katafiasz wrote:
> PyGTK. It has not as nice API (reminds me of Win32 API, which is
> disastrous),

The original wxWidgets API was somewhat reminiscent of Microsoft's
MFC.  There isn't anything "disastrous" about it.  You have a
class hierarchy, methods and properties.  What exactly is the
issue you have?

> isn't in my experience really stable,

Care to substantiate that?  (I mean now, not several years ago).

> uses outdated gtk+ 1.2 on my primary platform,

wxPython works with both GTK 1 and 2.  Until wxPython 2.5, Robin
couldn't find a way to distribute GTK 2 based binaries that would
work on any machine.  You could compile yourself against GTK2.

> non-LCD) widget, like treeview or fileselector. I feel no urge to
> have yet another "standard" GUI in python I won't ever use.

Wherever possible, wxWidgets uses the native widgets.  I ran the wxPython
demo and looked at both widgets you mention and they appear identical
to ones in other Gnome programs (I run Gnome for my Linux desktop).

> GUI toolkit isn't something a language should provide.

It is *extremely* rare for a language environment not to provide a
gui and associated tools.  About the only other major one I can think of
that doesn't is Perl.  (You could argue that GNU C/C++ on Unix doesn't
either, but that is due to GUI deficiency on Unix.  On other platforms
such as Windows and Mac, C/C++ does come with gui tools and libraries).

> there (and as I said, I don't consider wxWidgets to be good toolkit)

I don't think that statement can be supported.  wxPython/widgets has been
getting better constantly.  However I don't think that wxPython should
be in the standard library because it is improving and has more frequent
release cycles, and I would like to take advantage of that.

Roger