ANN: WxInter

[Jeremy Bowers]

On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 10:24:03 -0700, Ed Suominen wrote:

> Good points. The thing to do, IMHO, would be to improve wxWindows/wxPython
> to provide the text and canvas widget functionality, and then move with the
> WxInter idea to use it as a path for abandoning TkInter.

I really didn't want to do my project in TkInter, because of the scarcity
of widgets. I once tried to go Windows-only, and source-modified the
Windows version to allow me access to even more Windows specific
functionality, and I *still* couldn't match the Tk Text widget.

In particular, the %x,y syntax that identifies a point in the text by
screen coordinates, although some other minor things were missing too. For
my app, that was the critical bit that even made it *possible* without
writing a new text widget somewhere. (While I could do it theoretically,
I'd sooner drop my app; there's no point in an app that needs a custom GTK
to work.)

You might want to instead focus on extended the pre-existing AnyGUI
project. 

http://anygui.sourceforge.net/

(Look, a constructive suggestion instead of criticism :-) !) Trying to
implement Tk in wxWindows is probably man-years of work, and probably the
most feasible avenue is to actually source-integrate the Tk widgets into
wxWindows itself; yes, that's a lot of work but I bet it is the least
overall. (Not a horrid idea, but extracting the Tk text widget may
be a real handful due to major impedance mismatch.) 

If you're willing to drop the 100% compatibility requirement, then at that
point there's no reason not to extent AnyGUI as much as possible, create a
Tk-a-like front end for AnyGUI, and anybody who uses too much Tk stuff
can't use AnyGUI, which is true no matter what you do so no loss. A little
more work, vastly more reward; a migration path off Tk for simple Tk
users, and if you start from day one with AnyGUI, more flexibility.