Wheel-reinvention with Python

[Cliff Wells]

On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 15:26 -0400, Mark Roseman wrote:
> > How can I embed a browser in Tk (I mean a real browser, like Mozilla,
> > Safari, or even Exploder)?  At all?  On any platform?  This has always
> > been the tradeoff for Tk.  
> 
> Try this as one example:
>       http://wiki.tcl.tk/4094

Okay, I figured if any, Win32 would be the one that worked, and I even
recall seeing this example at one time.  However, last time I checked,
this bit of code wasn't actually working (although it may have been a
temporary situation).

Still, that leaves Linux and Mac out in the cold.  But I'll admit you
met my challenge.  Most likely you can actually do most of the things
with Tk you can with Wx, it's simply a matter of how much effort is
going to be (for instance, it's certainly quite possible to embed Gecko
in Tk, but I for one am not likely to be up to the task).

> I'd respectfully disagree (having done large, real-world Tk apps).  
> You're right that Tk has a slow learning curve, which makes it easy to 
> knock out simple interfaces really quickly - and generally ones that are 
> not too impressive looking.  You can do more sophisticated ones, and 
> ones that blend properly into the platforms you're working on - however, 
> the amount of effort and learning curve increase substantially.  This is 
> because you end up needing to do a lot more fiddling, looking at or 
> using any of a large number of add-on packages, etc.).

Yes, this was my finding with Tk.  I ended up using Pmw.MegaWidgets and
a few other things to make up for deficiencies in the core library,  but
mostly I found a need to write highly sophisticated controls myself,
many of which were simply provided by wxPython.  I was spending more
time writing controls than writing applications.  It was kind of fun and
interesting, but not very productive.  This is what prompted my move to
wxPython several years ago.  I still believe wxPython to be a much more
rapidly evolving toolkit (although my tracking of Tk has fallen to
almost nil since the switch so I'm willing to stand corrected or at
least leave the point open to debate).  The native look-and-feel across
all platforms was another big motivation, but no the primary one.
Mostly I found that the steeper learning curve paid off quite well in
the long run.

Regards,
Cliff

-- 
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