[Tutor] experience/opinions with deploying python GUI app to Linux, Win32, and Mac OS X

[greg whittier]

Hi gang,

I know this is probably like asking whether vi or emacs is better, but I'm
looking for the best cross-platform (linux, windows, mac os x) user
interface toolkit.  Since the users won't be programmers, I'd like it to
feel as much like a native app as possible in terms of installation.  It
should feel like installing any other mac/windows/linux application.

I'm writing a very simple app to retrieve data from a device or import it
from a file and then upload that data to a website (and possibly keep a
local backup of the data using sqlite or similar).    The main widget will
be what in gtk would is called listview with a checkbox column for selecting
which data to upload possibly as a panel within a wizard that would also
have panels for selecting the device and logging into the web site.

Deploying to the Mac seems to be the most difficult from what I've read.
pygtk/glade seems natural for linux and even window, but 've read about
difficulties with gtk on the mac, which at one point required installing
X11, I believe.  There's a "native" (no X11) port, but I'm not sure how
mature that is.

Here's what I've thought about with some pros/cons:

- tkinter -- this is the obvious answer I suppose, but the widget set is
limited and not pretty (out of the box at least)
- pygtk -- not easy to deploy on mac?  Non-native looking widgets
- wxpython - complete widget set and native looking, but not sure if it's
easy to deploy
- jython/SWT -- I have no experience with this, but everybody has a JVM, so
deploying should be easy
- web app running locally -- no experience with this, but everybody has a
web browser and there are frameworks like django I could use
- curses -- probably not as pretty as mac/windows users would expect

Any success stories out there?

Thanks,
Greg
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