Tkinter or wxpython?

[kyosohma at gmail.com]

On Aug 6, 9:58 am, "Chris Mellon" <arka... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 06 Aug 2007 07:39:12 -0700, Paul Rubin
>
>
>
> <"http://phr.cx"@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> > kyoso... at gmail.com writes:
> > >  I've read that Tkinter doesn't scale well if you're writing complex
> > > GUIs. I haven't been able to test this hypothesis though. However,
> > > since I had to rewrite VBA apps into Python, to get the right "look
> > > and feel" I needed the widgets that wxPython provided. Since I started
> > > out with C++, I find wxPython better than Tkinter, but it's all pretty
> > > subjective. Try them both!
>
> > Tkinteger (dang, I always end up typing it that way, I won't even
> > bother fixing the error) is easy to use for simple gui's, and it's
> > part of the standard python distro which for me is a big advantage (no
> > extra crap to download).  However, the widget set is rather ugly and
> > doesn't blend in well with anyone's native widgets; the widget
> > selection itself is rather narrow, and I think kyosohma may be right
> > that it doesn't scale well to complex gui's.  I've looked at the code
> > for IDLE's gui and it's terrifying.
>
> > At this point I think nobody should write desktop gui apps without a
> > good reason.  There is a fairly flexible and easy to program gui
> > already running on almost every desktop, namely the web browser.
> > Before you write a gui using some client side toolkit, ask yourself
> > whether you can instead embed a web server in your application and
> > write an HTML gui.  That approach is not always the answer, but it has
> > considerable advantages when you can do it that way.
>
> Some disadvantages of the web based platform:
>
> No native look and feel - constrained by the browser.
> No control over browser UI idioms. I had to write this post twice
> because the text control lost focus and I hit backspace, going back in
> the history and losing my work.
> No native integration - no "open file", no "browse the filesystem", no
> rich drag and drop, no copy/paste.
> No or poor dialogs. Poor multiple window support.
> More platforms to develop on and test with.
> Limited to CSS box model for layout.
>
> You can mitigate some of these constraints if you *require* the local
> web browser technique, rather than supporting local or remote access.
> You can mitigate more if you write your own browser host (along the
> lines of the dashboard in OS X), but then you get to write 3
> applications instead of one.
>
> The web is a terrible application platform. There is not a single web
> application in existence which has even half the UI functionality of a
> rich client application. There are some (even many) applications for
> which the benefit of global access and easy deployment makes up for
> the lack in functionality, but statements like "At this point I think
> nobody should write desktop gui apps without a good reason" are simply
> ludicrously misguided.

If you could use Python's antiquated Grail web browser and write
plugin applications, then that would be awesome! There are trade offs
with anything though.

Mike