How to choose the right GUI toolkit ?

[Bill Maxwell]

On 8 Nov 2006 11:49:07 -0800, "John Henry" <john106henry at hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
>John Salerno wrote:
>> Dan Lenski wrote:
>>
>> > So, is there another toolkit I should be looking at?
>>
>> I highly recommend wxPython. It's very mature, full-featured, and
>> portable, and fairly easy to learn as well. I can't really compare it to
>> other toolkits (not having used any of them, except Tkinter), but it's
>> definitely one of the most popular and well-supported ones out there.
>>
>> http://www.wxpython.org/
>
>I highly recommend that you try PythonCard (which sits on top of
>wxPython).  You can get productive very very quickly.  Take a look at:
>
>http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/walkthrough1.html


I took a brief look at PythonCard almost a year ago and got discouraged
by what I found, so I stopped looking at it.  I've inserted my notes
from back then, below.  Does anybody know if these things have been
fixed in the latest release?

Bill


=====================================================================
My notes from Fri Dec-23-2005:

This is a list of gripes I have while trying to learn about PythonCard.
I'm trying to investigate various GUI builders for Python, and
PythonCard looks promising, but a lot of things are getting in the way.

I installed yesterday, using this installer:
PythonCard-0.8.1.FIXED.win32.exe

A)  The very first example in the tutorial is wrong!  

	On this page:  http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/documentation.html
	When you follow this link to try something for the very first time:

		Getting Started in PythonCard by Dan Shafer: 
			http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/walkthrough1.html

	You quickly see that the minimal.py example doesn't even contain
this line, even though the tutorial refers to it:

		def on_menuFileAbout_select(self, event):

	And, of course, if you replace the word "pass" with this, as
instructed:

		result = dialog.alertDialog(self, 'It works!', 'Showing Off')

	it won't run, because the existing "pass" line isn't inside a def
inside of a class.


B)  Is the Notebook widget really supported?

	In the installed file "changelog.txt" (gets installed as part of
PythonCard installation), it says:

		"added Notebook component, PageBackground, and testNotebook
 		sample"

	But, the testNotebook sample is nowhere to be found.

	I looked lots of places, including the main SourceForge web site,
and on the wiki, here:

		http://wiki.wxpython.org/index.cgi/PythonCard

	Both the main website and the wiki seem way out of date, and the
latest dates I could find on both of them are sometime in 2004.

	Finally, by following the mailing list archive link on the main
website, I managed to find a reference to the notebook component on the
ASPN site, where some guy named Brian wonders about the same thing as
me, concerning the availability of the notebook component:

		http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/pythoncard/2536825

	and, that message led me here:

		http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pythoncard/1060

	where Kevin Altis admits that he forgot to include it in the 0.8.1
release!  At least he provides a way to download it separately.  But,
gheesh, this is pretty poor for a new user.  I was interested in using
the notebook component right away, because I looked at the wxGlade
tutorial before looking at PythonPage, and they use the notebook
component in their example (and I decided I really want to use the
component).

	To add insult to injury, after you download the zip file with the
testNotebook stuff, the readme file says this:

		"Until we have a Notebook integrated into some of the other
samples or tools this will serve as a basic test app, but I don't expect
to include it in releases."

C)  Are the websites being maintained?