[Idle-dev] noob questions about tkinter, tcl/tk, and wxpython

[Todd V Rovito]

On Apr 2, 2013, at 11:57 PM, Sean Felipe Wolfe <ether.joe at gmail.com> wrote:

> So IDLE uses tkinter as its GUI toolkit yes? I was doing some reading
> up and comparing with wxpython.
> 
> Tkinter was chosen because of simplicity? (Which seems like a good
> reason). Is Tcl/tk still a relevant technology? Their website seems to
> be active, soliciting students for the summer of code 2013, and lots
> of advertising. What's the history between Tcl/Tk and Python?
> 
> Do we run into limitations using tkinter? Any particular annoyances?
> Does it still seem like the best choice for a simple editor like IDLE?
> Is tkinter a valid choice for modern GUI development or is it more of
> a holdover?
> 
> As I intend get more into IDLE contributing, I'm just looking to get
> more of a feel of what's going on behind the scences. I dig simple
> approaches especially compared to some of the overly-complex systems I
> have to work with on the day job.
Sean,
   These are great questions!  First off Tkinter has been updated with themed widgets in ttk (http://docs.python.org/2/library/ttk.html). IDLE does not use ttk yet but perhaps in the future?  Tkinter has been Python's defacto GUI that ships with Python which is a good reason IDLE uses it.  Could IDLE be created with wxWidgets?  Sure but until Python ships with wxWidgets or something else there is not a point in changing IDLE.  My personal feeling is we should concentrate on IDLE bug fixing making it a great product.  Redesigns with ttk or wxWidgets should happen down the road.
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