GUIs - A Modest Proposal

[Stephen Hansen]

On 6/12/10 8:34 PM, Gregory Ewing wrote:
> lkcl wrote:
> 
>>  * in neither gtk nor qt does there exist an "auto-layout" widget
>> that's equivalent to putting some <span /> DOM objects into a <div />,
>> to "flow" widgets that wrap around.
> 
> You essentially seem to be complaining here that pqyqt and
> pygtk are not HTML. They have their own auto-layout mechanisms
> that do what they're designed to do well enough -- they just
> happen to be based on a different model from HTML.
> 
> I'm far from convinced that HTML and CSS are the One True Way
> to design GUIs these days, that web apps are about to take over
> the world, etc. There is still a place for GUI toolkits that
> are not based on the DOM, or whatever the W3C technology of
> the month is.

Agreed. While "web interfaces" have a certain appeal, and definite
strengths, they have difficulties as well.

Although I have never used gtk directly, I do use wxWidgets/wxPython
extensively, and its Linux-port is GTK based. Its a serious learning
curve, I do freely admit. But once I began to think in wx, it works well.

And all of my wxPython apps use dynamic / "auto-layout" sort of
orientation and sizing without any sort of explicit management. So its
clearly -possible-. Maybe its entirely done in wx, and wx does all the
pain that lkcl went through trying to get gtk to do it. But that seems
unlikely.

But I don't actually know, one way or the other.

-- 

   Stephen Hansen
   ... Also: Ixokai
   ... Mail: me+list/python (AT) ixokai (DOT) io
   ... Blog: http://meh.ixokai.io/

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