WxPython versus Tkinter.

[Terry Reedy]

On 1/27/2011 12:31 PM, Mark Roseman wrote:
>   Terry Reedy<tjreedy at udel.edu>  wrote:
>> Tk itself is purely a gui package -- abstract widgits, geometry placers
>> to make them visible, and an event system to make them active. But it
>> does have the baggage of needing tcl included. About a decade ago, some
>> people had the idea of removing the tcl dependency, but nothing seems to
>> have come of that. For some people, the tcl baggage is reason enough to
>> be rid of tk.
>
>
> Thanks for raising this point.  While I don't want to exhaustively
> respond to this, I would like to raise a few important points.
>
> 1. The performance issues of having Tk use Tcl are negligible; the bulk
> of Tk (code-wise and time-wise) are spent in C.  Tcl itself is also very
> fast nowadays, using all the usual techniques that modern dynamic
> languages use.

I have the impression that tcl is mostly used in initial setup and 
configuration, as opposed to repetitive drawing to the screen. But I do 
not really know.
>
> 2. Some people do have moral/purity objections to including Tcl, and
> while I understand where the sentiment comes from, I think there are few
> solid engineering reasons for this.

There are two types of objections which have much less force now than a 
decade ago. One is the size issue. A tcl-less tk would presumably be 
smaller and thus add less to the Window distribution. The other is that 
tcl and Python were once seen as competing scripting languages, so why 
promote the competitor? Well, if there really was a contest, Python won.

> 3. Removing Tcl from Tk makes keeping up with changes in Tk very
> difficult.  The Perl people found this out; Perl/Tk extracted Tcl, and
> as a result remained using a 10 year old version of Tk because upgrading
> would have been too painful.  The newer Perl binding (Tkx) is in fact a
> ridiculously thin binding over the Tcl API, and makes keeping up to date
> with the newest Tk changes trivial, often requiring no code changes in
> the Perl binding.

Good point. Python should (continue to) just use the latest tk from its 
maintainers. If *they* were to decouple it from tcl (unlikely, it 
seems), fine. If not, so be it ;-).

> If anyone does have questions, comments or concerns about Python
> including a Tcl interpreter to use Tk, I'd be happy to try to explain or
> address them.

Thanks for the additional info. We need more of that.

---
Terry Jan Reedy