Tkinter: The good, the bad, and the ugly!

[Almar Klein]

On 30 December 2010 00:58, rantingrick <rantingrick at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Tkinter: The good, the bad, and the ugly!
> -----------------------------------------
> An expose by rantingrick
>
>
> ----------------------
>  The Good
> ----------------------
> Back in the early days of Python --when this simplistic beauty of
> programming bliss we enjoy today was just a tiny glimmer of hope in a
> archaic world plagued by dark forest of braces and jagged caverns of
> cryptic syntaxes-- our beloved dictator (Mr. Van Rossum) had the
> foresight to include a simplistic GUI toolkit that we call Tkinter
> into the stdlib. And he saw that it was great, and that it was good,
> and so he rested.
>
> And when the first python programmers used this gift handed down from
> the gods they were pleased. They could see that all of the heavy work
> of cross-platform-ism landed square on the shoulders of TCL/Tk and all
> Python had to do was wrap a few methods to wield the beast we all know
> as graphical user interfaces.
>
> Life was good, people were happy...but darkness loomed on the
> horizon...
>
>
> ----------------
>  Enter the Bad
> ----------------
> However as we all know there exists no real Utopian bliss without many
> pitfalls and snares.  Since Tkinter is just a wrapping of some TclTk
> calls the people realized that they are now at the perilous mercy of
> another group of developers (psst: thats the TCL folks!) who have only
> their own goals and dreams in mind and could care less for the
> troubles of others. They realized that Tkinter was lacking. However
> this lacking was not Tkinters fault, no, the fault lye with TclTk. And
> to compound these problems they also realized that in order to fix the
> design problems inherit in TclTk they must learn an obscure and mostly
> useless language... TclTk!!
>
> --------------------------------
>  Utterly destroyed by the Ugly!
> --------------------------------
> And then the people became very angry... "What a double cross!" they
> chanted. Why should we learn a language like TclTk just to fix
> problems that the TclTk folks need to fix themselves? Would not that
> time be more wisely spent in looking over code that is 100% Python and
> modifying it? Not only would our community benefit but we can
> propagate the maintainece and/or improvements to a wider group of
> folks by removing the high entrance requirements. When we elevate
> every python programmer to a PythonGUI maintainer then we will have
> achieved community nirvana!
>
> We have now reached a point where the very simplicity we have embraced
> (Tkinter) has become a stumbling block not only for the users of
> Tkinter, but more devastating is the damage this TCL/Tk monkey has
> done to keep our fellow Python brothers and sisters from learning how
> a GUI kit works (behind the scenes) with each OS to bring all this
> graphical stuff to life.
>
> ------------------------
>  So what should we do?
> ------------------------
> The answer is simple. We need a 100% Python GUI. A GUI coded in Python
> from top to bottom. A GUI that is cross platform to the big three
> (Windows, Linux, and Mac). A GUI that not only is easy as Tkinter but
> also a GUI that can be manipulated by the average python programmer. A
> GUI that not only teaches the fundamentals of using a GUI, but also a
> GUI that teaches how a GUI works under the hood
>
> Then and only then will Python be truly what GvR intended. I want
> everyone here to consider what i am proposing and offer some opinions
> because it is time for change.
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>

A lot of ranting indeed... I agree that Tk has a few shortcomings (I never
use it myself), but since many people are currently using it, I don't see an
easy way of replacing Tk with anything else. FWIW, I like the ideas of FLTK
(very lightweight, just draw all widgets itself + has good OpenGl support),
although the project seems to have lost its momentum. I think that you are
suggesting something like that, but written in Python.

  Almar
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