Evil, evil wxPython (and a glimmer of hope)

[vivainio at gmail.com]

I rarely do GUIs, and reminded myself today why that is the case
(simply, it's not fun).

I implemented a simple TreeCtrl, and had to implement my own 'children'
method, of all things!

Here it is:

    def children(self,node):
        c = []
        nc,cookie = self.GetFirstChild(node)
        while 1:
            info = self.GetItemText(nc)
            c.append((info,nc))

            nc, cookie= self.GetNextChild(node,cookie)
            if not nc.IsOk():
                break

        return c


And it even fails with zero children. This is as unpythonic as it gets.

However, it should be pretty easy to write small wrapper over the
wxPython api. I'm thinking of wrapping or injecting additional methods
to TreeCtrl that start with lowercase letters and return something
sensible, with reasonable methods. Something like:

root = self.AddRoot("root dir") # root is normal wx TreeCtrl root
tree = EasyWx(root)   # now tree is our wrapped, more "fun" root
for c in tree.children():
  print c.name

# etc. etc.

This is a bit like Brian Orendorff's "path" module that turns something
low level to something you can use easily, without throwing you into a
world of "frameworks", toolkits and whatnot. I can see there are things
like Wax or PythonCard, but they are still too "frameworky", and you
don't use them to extend wxPython, you use *them* and they use
wxPython. I'd basically like to rely on something that is there for the
long haul (plain wxPython API) but only use convenience wrappers *on my
own initiative*, as it seems convenient. Just like I'd use the "path"
module.

wxPython is great as it is (a simple wrapper for a C++ toolkit) and the
basic design is ok & proven, I'm just too lazy to use it in its current
form.