Wheel-reinvention with Python

[Mike Meyer]

Torsten Bronger <bronger at physik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> Hallöchen!
> Calvin Spealman <ironfroggy at gmail.com> writes:
>> The choice is GUI toolkits is largely seperate from
>> Python. Consider that they are just bindings to libraries that are
>> developed completely seperate of the language. GUI is should be
>> seperate from the language, and thus not bound to same
>> expectations and desires as elements of the language itself.
> I disagree.  A modern language must provide a convenient and
> well-embedded way to write GUI applications.

I disagree. A modern development environment aimed at developers of
desktop applications may be required to provide that; not being a
developer of desktop applications, I'm not really qualified to say. A
*language* doesn't need to provide that. I'd say that a language
providing that would limit the language. Or cause it to branch when it
got ported to platforms for which the graphics elements of the
language were totally unsuitable.

The tools for writing GUI applications belong in a library, not the
langauge.

> This is not a sign of decadence, but a very good promotional argument.

But it's not required for the language to succeed. C and C++ are both
doing very well without your a well-embedded way to write GUI
applications.

However, you can get compilers for both that come bundled with a good
GUI library. Could it be that that's what you really want - someone to
distribute Python bundled with an enterprise-class GUI library and
IDE?

> However, in my opinion we don't need yet another binding so thin
> that C or C++ is shining through, but a modern replacement for
> Tkinter with its Pythonic way of thinking.

I don't particularly like Tkinter, but it seems to me that it's pretty
much won. It seems to be installed on every desktop platform along
with Python. That means that if I want to distribute GUI apps, I'm
going to cause the least headache for my end users by writing them in
Tkinter.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.