Wheel-reinvention with Python

[Cliff Wells]

On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 17:54 -0400, Mark Roseman wrote:

> 
> I'll point out that this has been done (in fact, many times).  For 
> example:
>       http://tkhtml.hwaci.com
> 
> (Integrating Gecko in has also been done, as a side note).

Interesting.  Your later point about hard to find is certainly correct
as my searches (albeit not as in-depth as they could have been) turned
up little in this regard.


> While I certainly don't begrudge anyone their choice of tools, it's no 
> surprise that someone who's become more familiar with wxPython would 
> have an unduly low opinion of Tk.  They've obviously spent more time 
> overcoming the warts in wxPython, and wouldn't have spent comparable 
> effort learning what it would take to overcome the warts in Tk - it just 
> looks hopelessly flawed in comparison.  

Well, as was mentioned earlier (by Paul I believe), "life is too short",
in this case, to become expert in more than one GUI toolkit (which as a
whole, are a wart on the face of programming in general, IMHO).  They
are highly complex and require a large investment of time regardless of
which you choose.  People often cite one kit as being "more pythonic"
than another, but frankly I've yet to see one that even remotely meets
that (admittedly vague) criteria.  I've made my choices based on my own
criteria, and certainly I would not hesitate to recommend my choices to
others.  

Frankly most of my ire in this thread has been over things tertiary to
the toolkits themselves: 1) the idea of demanding that one toolkit be
"the preferred" way  2) dismissing without due consideration the hard
work of others who have volunteered their code without demand for
recompense, and 3) what I've taken (rightly or wrongly) to be deliberate
obtuseness on the part of some of the participants.

Aside from that, I consider the choice of GUI toolkits to be a pretty
benign issue and hardly one qualifying for the level of heat we've had
for the last day or so.

> Switch "wxPython" and "Tk" around in the above argument and I think the 
> statements equally hold of course.

Agreed.

Regards,
Cliff

-- 
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