Cross-platform GUI development

[Sion Arrowsmith]

bramble  <cadet.bramble at gmail.com> wrote:
> [ GTK is ] free
>software, so contributors can try and make the L&F more native if it's
>really that big a deal.

But the people who care about Windows native L&F are not the people
with the resources (time, money, probably experience) to address
this issue. And the people who do probably don't care. If you're
developing an app where it matters, it's much easier to just go with
the option that gives the right L&F out of the box.

>One reason I'm not crazy about wx because I don't like the idea of
>adding yet another API layer into the mix. Wx seems quite large, and
>if issues arise, debugging a GUI that calls another GUI does not seem
>like a fun way to spend your time.

I used to maintain a couple of commercial wxPython apps which were
only ever meant to run on Windows, and the native L&F was the
primary driver behind the choice of wx. Because Linux is my
development platform of choice, I wound up trying to run them there
as well. For a supposedly cross-platform library, it required a lot
of porting effort. And, as you say, when things go wrong it's
difficult to know whether to lay it at the feet of wxPython, wx or
GTK. (And then bear in mind that GTK is layered on top of X....)

-- 
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