[Anygui-devel] Re: [Anygui-users] Backend API design similar to anygui?

[Magnus L. H. <ml...@id...>]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 12:35:00AM -0800, Brett wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Dec 2001, Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Dec 24, 2001 at 02:50:55AM -0800, Brett wrote:
> >
> > > I am planning to learn GUI programming and anygui is going to be my GUI
> > > API of choice.  But  I know that there are going to be times  where I
> > > am going to want more then what anygui can offer me since it has to deal
> > > with the lowest common denominator among its various backends.
> >
> > Yes, that is a point we intend to address, by allowing you to write
> > backend-specific extensions etc.
> >
> 
> Wonderful!  That would make  anygui that much more powerful.

To some degree it's already possible, since you can query the
current backend with the backend() function. However, there will
be some features to ease the implementation of components that
either use the Anygui API, of backend-specific things where available.
 
> 
> > > I was wondering what backend has an API design similar to anygui?  I hope
> > > to minimize having to learn a backend that I would use for complex GUI
> > > work that strays severely from anygui and thus minimize extra learning or
> > > coding bugs because I can't keep the two API designs separated in my head.
> >
> > I'm not quite sure which one would look the most like Anygui, but in
> > general, I think wxPython and Tkinter are good choices that aren't too
> > hard to learn. (I sort of think that wxPython is a bit cooler, but
> > that's probably just a matter of taste :)
> >
> 
> I had a sneaking suspicion you were  going to say that.  Following anygui-dev
> has suggested that those two were being used as the basis, but I was not sure.
> I have a sneaking suspicion I will go with Tkinter because of the amount of
> documentation online and being easier to install.

wxPython, Tkinter, and Jython are perhaps the three most used
backends supported by Anygui. (Or, actually, Jython is in a special
position, since it is a separate platform which must be covered,
and which basically has only one GUI package :)

But the goal of Anygui is, of course, to cover many backends.

> 
> > > Thanks in advance for any and all help.
> >
> > No problem -- not sure how much I helped, though ;)
> >
> > By the way: If you see something you need but which is lacking in
> > Anygui, just shout. We might very well include support for it... :)
> >
> 
> =)  OK.  Do you think anygui is at a point that I could actually use it to learn
> GUI programming?  Are most of the reworks you are planning to do after .1 going
> to be behind the scenes or will they affect the APIs usage?

I think you can very well use it for experimentation and learning,
yes. There are changes ahead, though. The most noticable are perhaps
a more extensive set of events and the addition of menus (which
currently aren't available).

One advantage of Anygui is that it has been designed to be simple
and easy to use, mainly because we want it to be usable for
teaching GUI programming. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be a very good
candidate for a standard Python GUI, I think :)

Your insights and experiences (if you choose to learn GUI programming
with Anygui) would be greatly appreciated, since they will help us
judge whether we have succeeded in making a package which is easy
to understand and use.

> -Brett C.

-- 
Magnus Lie Hetland                           The Anygui Project
http://hetland.org                           http://anygui.org