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

[Octavian Rasnita]

From: "Alexander Kapps" <alex.kapps at web.de>
> Tkinter causes damage? Very bad damage? What are you talking about?

I am talking about the fact that Python promotes Tkinter, and many beginners will start using it, and they will start creating applications with it, and they will learn to use it better than WxPython, and they will start believing that Tkinter is better because it is easier to use than WxPython, so they will start convincing others that Tkinter is the best, and they will start finding many reasons that show that Tkinter is better. And after this, they will say that they don't care about the real problems generated by GUIs like Tk.
And a very big problem is that the applications that use Tk/GTK are not accessible for screen readers, so those applications will be just blank for people with visual impairments which need to use a screen reader.

Those applications won't be less nice, or just a little harder to use. They won't be accessible at all and they will help the discrimination of the blind people, and not because of technical problems, because those problems can be solved with a better interface like Wx, which is not perfectly accessible either, but it is much better. That discrimination appears just because some people say that they don't care.

> 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 

It is a redundancy for you, but have you imagined that for some people the display is the redundant part of the computer?

> 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.

I didn't say that a GUI lib is useless. The GUIS that create discrimination by offering access only for some users (when there are other GUIS that can offer access to everyone) create damage and they should be avoided, and for avoiding them, the beginners need to understand this. But Python promotes that bad GUI lib by including it in the default package instead of promoting a better lib.

> Which one? That's the whole point. There currently is no better GUI 
> lib than Tkinter which allows quick and easy GUI programming and 

Are you a beginner? A good programmer is not interested only to create an application with 10 lines of code, no matter the results.
The application need to have a good quality and to be accessible by everyone if the technology allows it.
Why do we like the portable GUIS and don't really like the native interfaces that don't work on other platforms?
Because we want our programs to be usable by as many people as possible. Well, some platforms render the output as sound and Tkinter are not "portable" on those platforms (screen readers).

> I have absolutely no problem with a better GUI lib, I just don't care

Well, I was sure that you are one of those who don't care...

Octavian