WxPython versus Tkinter.

Mark Roseman mark at markroseman.com
Thu Jan 27 14:51:52 EST 2011


 Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> > 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.


Tcl as a scripting language is used during some initialization things, 
used to invoke callbacks, and a few other non-performance critical areas.

It sometimes helps to think of Tcl as a very powerful C library that 
happens to have a scripting language on top. :-)  For example, there are 
C functions in the Tcl library that do things like string management, 
cross platform I/O, very efficient hash tables, dynamic lists, etc. that 
are used everywhere inside Tk.  But none of those calls mean a trip 
through the Tcl interpreter per se.

Every dynamic language would have similar internals of course, though 
with slight differences and different API's. 

Mark



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