Re: [Anygui-devel] On AnyGUI Core

[David M. <da...@re...>]

Peter Damoc wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> I've been looking around at python GUI toolkits just for fun and I came 
> across AnyGUI.
> It is very impressive but I think it solves the wrong problem. Let me 
> explain myself:
8><

Agreed - AnyGui by its nature is vulnerable to countless environmental
quirks. If it had a large, organised and devoted development and
maintenance team, it would probably cope well. But it would take a lot
of resources to prevent the endless "it's not working on <linux distro x>"

> As a programmer I would like to have is an OSS python GUI toolkit that 
> looks great everywhere and acts the same on all platforms without
> custom  hack in the app code.

PyQT is worth a look. However, that carries the cost of Qt's weird
windows licensing quirks.

> There is currently no such thing

True, but (IMHO) the PMW/Tkinter combination comes very close
(http://pmw.sourceforge.net).

> and my little mind cannot understand why.
> Ok... so its a lot of work to create such a thing

Creating such a thing is relatively straightforward. Making it practical
- easily learned, easy to setup and use, and respectful of resources
takes about 5-50 times that amount of work again.

There's a lot of good gui libs, but they're hard to understand unless
you're willing to study the implementation's source code, or even live
with the developer and suck the pizza stains off his/her T-shirt.

Please do have a serious try of Tkinter, with the PMW classes over the
top. I've been there, from scared gui neophyte to someone that can build
smart, platform-independent guis - all the pain and labour you put into
learning Tkinter, you will recoup in joy and satisfaction as your apps
Simply Just Work. Tkinter-based progs also package well into windows
standalone EXE packages (eg Py2EXE), so you can spare your users the
confusion of installing/setting up their own Python environment.

Cheers
David