Best GUI for Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 4:55 PM, Christian Gollwitzer <auriocus at gmx.de> wrote:
> Am 27.04.15 um 01:06 schrieb Chris Angelico:
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 6:26 AM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> It doesn't have to. By using the newer ‘tkinter.ttk’ library
>>> <URL:https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.ttk.html>, the GUI will
>>> use native look-and-feel widgets.
>>>
>> Does the new library also deal with the ongoing issues with Unicode
>> support? AIUI there's some fundamental problem with Tkinter which
>> means that (possibly only on Windows?) non-BMP characters simply can't
>> be displayed.
>
>
> No. That is a fundamental limit in Tcl 8 (it uses UCS-2 to store strings),
> and will probably only addressed in Tcl 9. ttk addresses mostly the theming
> issue and is now "8 years new" (Tk 8.5a6) with a precursor (Tile) from ten
> years ago.

Right, so this is an ongoing issue (at least for now).

>> To me, that's a pretty bad flaw - we should be aiming
>> new projects at complete Unicode support, which means Python 3 and a
>> good GUI toolkit.
>
>
> YMMV. Is non-BMP needed for any living non-esoteric language? I agree that
> it is a big flaw, but still is useful for very many projects.

Maybe not for the language itself, but then, you can transliterate
Chinese using nothing but Roman letters and Arabic numerals (all in
ASCII), so merely proving that you can represent text doesn't
necessarily mean everything. Mainly, SMP characters are used for
things like musical notes, mathematical symbols, emoticons, and so on.
(Also, I'm not sure of the current state of the art as regards Chinese
and Japanese characters.) If you support only the BMP, then you're far
better off than supporting only ASCII or only <some eight-bit code
page>, to be sure, but it's still cutting out some characters. For a
program that already exists, already works, and can't handle non-BMP
characters, it's a small issue, and not one that I'd be recommending a
complete GUI toolkit replacement for; but for a green-field project, I
would strongly recommend using Python 3 and some toolkit which
supports the full Unicode range.

This is a problem that won't just "go away". As more SMP blocks get
assigned, more people will start using them, and get frustrated at
your program for not letting them. (And why should an end user need to
know the difference between 😃 and ⍥, that the second one works and
the first doesn't?) Unless you're willing to wait for a Python that
ships Tcl 9, Tkinter is a choice that restricts your end users.

ChrisA