I am fed up with Python GUI toolkits...

[Terry Reedy]

On 7/19/2011 10:12 PM, sturlamolden wrote:
> What is wrong with them:
>
> 1. Designed for other languages, particularly C++, tcl and Java.
>
> 2. Bloatware. Qt and wxWidgets are C++ application frameworks. (Python
> has a standard library!)
>
> 3. Unpythonic memory management: Python references to deleted C++
> objects (PyQt). Manual dialog destruction (wxPython). Parent-child
> ownership might be smart in C++, but in Python we have a garbage
> collector.
>
> 4. They might look bad (Tkinter, Swing with Jython).
>
> 5. All projects to write a Python GUI toolkit die before they are
> finished. (General lack of interest, bindings for Qt or wxWidgets
> bloatware are mature, momentum for web development etc.)

Greg Ewing's pygui project is still going and releasing new versions.

> How I would prefer the GUI library to be, if based on "native"
> widgets:
>
> 1. Lean and mean -- do nothing but GUI. No database API, networking
> API, threading API, etc.
>
> 2. Do as much processing in Python as possible. No more native code
> (C, C++, Cython) than needed.
>
> 3. Instances of extension types can clean themselves up on
> deallocation. No parent-child ownership model to mess things up. No
> manual clean-up. Python does all the reference counting we need.
>
> 4. No artist framework. Use OpenGL, Cairo, AGG or whatever else is
> suitable.
>
> 5. No particular GUI thread synchronization is needed  -- Python has a
> GIL.
>
> 6. Expose the event loop to Python.
>
> 7. Preferably BSD-style license, not even LGPL.
>
> 8. Written for Python in Python -- not bindings for a C++ or tcl
> toolkit.

I think you described pygui.

> Is it worth the hassle to start a new GUI toolkit project?

Ask Greg what you might help with.

> Or should modern deskop apps be written with something completely
> different, such as HTML5?

An interesting question. I think the pyjamas project is aimed in this 
direction, but the author says he will never port to Py3. (He explained 
his reasons on this list when I suggested that.)

---
Terry Jan Reedy