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

[Alexander Kapps]

On 18.01.2011 09:58, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
 > From: "Alexander Kapps" <alex.kapps at web.de>
 >> On 17.01.2011 21:04, Octavian Rasnita wrote:
 >>> I say probably not considering the availability of 3rd party
 >>> downloads. What say you, Python community?
 >>
 >> Available as 3rd party downloads:
 >>
 >> XML,HTML,...
 >> HTTP,FTP,SMTP,POP,IMAP/...
 >> MD5,SHA,...
 >> zip,bzip,...
 >>
 >> and so on and so on and so on.
 >>
 >> Remove them all just because they are available as 3rd party
 >> downloads?
 >
 > No, they should not be removed because they don't cause any damage,
 > very bad damage as Tkinter does.


Tkinter causes damage? Very bad damage? What are you talking about?

 >> The "Batteries included" of Python is just *great* and I vote for
 >> *more* not less batteries!
 >
 > Well, in that case, why don't you agree to also include WxPython in
 > the Python package?

Well, I don't like wx that much and others have already highlighted 
some of the problems with it. I think that adding redundancy is bad 
and I really want a GUI toolkit that makes it easy to quickly write 
a simple GUI, so I do not want wx to replace Tkinter. But yes, I 
wouldn't mind the inclusion of a large GUI package.

 >>> And one more thing. Not all the Python programmers create desktop
 >>> apps so a GUI lib is useless. Some of them use Python only for
 >>> web programming or only for system administration.
 >>
 >> Not all Python programmers do web programming, so please remove
 >> the useless HTML junk too.
 >
 > Why do you call it "html junk"?

You said a GUI lib is useless because not all programmers write 
GUIs. so I say an HTML lib is useless because not all programmers 
write web stuff. Got it? Both are useful and I'm absolutely against 
any attempt to remove either from the stdlib. *That* would cause damage.

 >> Almost every beginner wants to do GUIs or at least some graphic
 >> stuff. Removing the GUI module from the stdlib would be plain
 >> wrong IMHO. But I don't understand the whole issue anyway. It
 >> isn't that you need to fire up your torrent client and wait 48
 >> hours for the Python download to complete. Why remove useful (to
 >> many, not most) stuff from the lib?
 >
 > Yes it can be useful for some people, but why promote it instead of
 > promoting a better library for beginners?

Which one? That's the whole point. There currently is no better GUI 
lib than Tkinter which allows quick and easy GUI programming and 
still has a large widget set, is pythonic and so on. PyGUI might be 
in the future. If you care that much go on and help making it happen.

I have absolutely no problem with a better GUI lib, I just don't 
care much and those who seem to care enough to start a war over and 
over again seem to be unwilling to really do anything.

 > Octavian
 >