WxPython versus Tkinter.

[Octavian Rasnita]

From: "Mark Roseman" <mark at markroseman.com>
> Octavian, thank you for very clearly making and repeating your point 
> about screen readers.  It is very obvious that at this point in time Tk 
> (and hence Tkinter) is not a suitable candidate if screen readers are an 
> important concern.


The screen readers are always an important concern if the GUI is used in a program that could be interesting for those who need a screen reader.
Of course that if that program is Corel Draw or Photoshop or a video-editing application it is not important to offer accessibility for screen readers, but most of the programs are not that kind of apps.

> In an ideal world, every GUI would be fully accessible.  The reality is 
> that sometimes, competing requirements will lead to accessibility being 
> lower in the priority list than other things.  So with different 
> requirements and priorities, the "best" solution will be different.


Yes of course I agree with this. But if... let's say Python would promote a better GUI than Tkinter, most Python programmers would probably start to learn to use that GUI, and they would be able to use it better than other GUIS, and the competing requirements might force them to use that GUI because they will be able to code the GUI easier with it and so on.
And if something doesn't work in that GUI, (segfaults for example) more and more programmers might become interested to solve those bugs in order to have a better GUI, and finally it would be much better than now, and... for more people.


> I don't object and in fact commend you for advocating for accessibility.  
> I do feel you are not acknowledging and fully respecting that others may 
> be in situations where accessibility may not be the primary concern.  


I think that the accessibility shouldn't be a concern at all, because I think it is too much to ask for such a thing from the programmers.
The applications should be accessible by default, by just using the right GUI which offer the necessary accessibility features.
Well yes, if some fields are not labeled or some images don't have a text associated with them... if somebody is interested he/she could ask those features added later and it would be very simple to add them, but if the program is made with Tkinter... then nothing could be made to improve the accessibility.

Let's imagine that Python doesn't offer any GUI lib and that no Python programmer knows to use a GUI lib.
What would the majority of Python programmer choose if Python would start to offer support for WxPython and Tkinter and WxPython would be packaged in the default distribution?

I think that the preference for Tk is because it is old and there are very many programmers that know to use it very well because these days the size of a program is not important.

I have also heard that there is no enough support for WxPython in order  to maintain it very well. This is a problem indeed and if it is true it can be a valid reason why WxPython is not considered, but WxPython is pretty well maintained. Aren't the WxPython developers willing to continue to maintain it if it will be added to Python distribution?

Octavian