WxPython versus Tkinter.

[Octavian Rasnita]

From: "Littlefield, Tyler" <tyler at tysdomain.com>
> Hello,
> 
> I have been on another list with Octavian, and he takes his 
> accessibility a bit to seriously. If things went his way, he wants laws 
> where -everything- has to be accessible, and it is illegal not to do so. 


Is the discrimination legal in your country?
If you create a program only for a part of the population knowing very well that you do that, without having technical issues, (because as you know, there are very well known technical solutions for it), it means that you discriminate a part of the population.

Of course, as I explained, if you want to create a drawing program or a video-editing application, there are technical issues that don't allow you to offer that program to everyone, so it is not your fault at all in that case.


> As a sidenote, I would like to preface everything I'm going to say by 
> mentioning the fact that I have been using a screen reader for many 
> years, so I understand some of where he is coming from.
> 
> I think my goal, (and I differ from Octavian here), is to try to find 
> fixes for things, rather than saying "this sucks, it does not work with 
> a reader, and thus it shouldn't be used). Having done a lot of 
> development work in the past, I can't say "hey you, I want you to make 
> this app accessible, and because you used TKInter it's not, so use 
> something else, but nothing that isn't accessible." Rather, I believe 
> those pushing accessibility should concentrate on the root cause; that 
> of fixing TKInter, and not forcing everyone else to use a different library.

This is like saying that those who need a screen reader should better find a solution for their health problems and after they will find it, they won't need a screen reader.
>From the accessibility perspective there are already accessible interfaces so that's solved and it just need to be used.
Making Tkinter would be great, but it would not be a solution if it won't be used after it will be accessible.

If Tk would be made accessible but Python would start including a QT GUI or another one that wouldn't be accessible and the programmers would start using that GUI, the result is that the apps won't be accessible.

If there is a solution now for this problem, and not in a bad GUI lib that doesn't many features, but one which is very fast and full of widgets, then that solution should be promoted by Python.
I don't say (as you pretend) that all the programmers should be forced to use it or at least to prefer it.
I said that it should be promoted because it is the right tool.

I think that the political corectness term was invented in USA...


> I believe that the approach is the main key here, and I have had this 
> argument many times. If I wrote an app, and someone said something along 
> the lines of "you need to change a core library because it doesn't work 
> with this program," my first response would be who the hell are you to 
> say what I need to use? We need to take the approach of "This is what is 
> wrong, this is why, this is possibly how it could be fixed. Would you be 
> willing to do so?"


With other words, you are very happy when you can't use a program because it is not accessible, thinking that as a programmer you won't be forced by someone else or laws to learn to use the right tool.
Or you may be willing to change all the programs in the world which are not accessible because they use a bad GUI.


> So, with all of this said, TKInter -is- unaccesssible for us. My 
> arguments have not been for or against one or the other in this thread, 
> but more to get RR to make a better point. Because eventually, WX would 
> benafit those using a screen reader a lot more than say, TKInter will. 
> That doesn't mean that I'm saying that we need to make it a part of the 
> stdlib as of yesterday, because segfaults from someone with 10+ years of 
> experience (multiple people, actually) says a lot, whether or not RR 
> wants to acknowledge said facts. 

Those segfaults would disappear much faster if WxPython would become more interesting and if it would become a part of Python distribution because there would be much more programmers interested about it and willing to solve its problems under some platforms.

WxPython has some problems under some platforms used by a minority of users. Tkinter has some problems for another minority of users.
The big picture is the worst thing possible and it is not that I can't see it, but I can't agree with it. The big picture is that very many people simply don't care and this is not something good.

Octavian