GUIs - A Modest Proposal
in [Python]
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From: geremy condra on 9 Jun 2010 00:47 On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 9:29 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve-REMOVE-THIS(a)cybersource.com.au> wrote: > On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:12:05 -0700, geremy condra wrote: > >> I didn't argue that Tcl is bad. I argued that a dependency on it is bad >> for python. Would you argue that Python should ship with Perl and Java >> because there are best-of-breed tools in those languages and python >> could leverage that? Of course not. > > Surely that depends on the tool, how difficult it would be for Python to > duplicate the functionality, and how important it is to provide the tool > as a standard product. Well, I guess that's where we more or less differ. If I felt like there were a piece of infrastructure for my language so critical that I simply had to drag java along to have it, I would seriously question whether it was worth my time to pursue the project at all. > In any case, Python doesn't ship with Tcl and Tk. They are dependencies > *only if you use Tkinter*. It's not compulsory. <snip> Tkinter- its not only capable of making terrible-looking UIs, its also capable of not being there when you need it! This is not a point in its favor. > Now, we might argue that the Python standard library "must" have a GUI > toolkit, in which case it's going to have some non-trivial dependency. I > don't see why it's so much worse to depend on Tcl/Tk compared to some > other external toolkit. I don't argue that. I don't think it or any other GUI toolkit belong in the stdlib, although if I had to pick one I'm pretty sure Tkinter wouldn't be it. > And even if it were undesirable to rely on any external toolkit, I don't > think it's terribly likely that with the resources available to the PSF > anyone is going to create Yet Another GUI Toolkit specifically for > Python. We might agree that, in a perfect world, it would be nice if > Python had no external dependencies at all (well, apart from the OS of > course), but it isn't going to happen anytime soon. Not unless you're > volunteering? :) Actually, I've had to do pretty much this on two separate occasions, and its not fun. Part of the reason why I like the idea of a sumo distribution- you can keep the core trim and low-dependency, while making sure that platforms where bits are cheap have the goodies that developers want. Geremy Condra
From: rantingrick on 9 Jun 2010 01:12 On Jun 8, 10:09 pm, Robert Kern <robert.k...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > It means that he, very charitably, gives new irritants the benefit of the doubt. > By changing identities, you are abusing this good behavior. By connecting your > identity to the previous one, his doubt is removed. And again you miss the very meat and potatoes of my post. Sadly like Ben you're so blinded by animosity that you cannot see. He kill-filed me because he is so vehemently against me on a personal level. So much against me that even the sight of the very words i write send him into fits of uncontrollable rage. This must be the case or why would he need to hide his eyes completely from my words. Could he not just exercise a bit of self restraint and skip my posts if they start to annoy too much? Apparently not. He is unable to control his actions so he must go to the extreme of kill-file. But you know i think it boils down to fear really. He is comfortable in his life and wishes to keep it as cookie cutter as he can. Any outside influence must be quashed before these meddling forces can take hold of him. He is so fearful of seeing the light in an opposing argument that blinding himself from reality is easier than facing reality. Insane asylums are filled to the rafters with these people. They walk around with tin foil wrapped around their heads supposedly because cell phone towers are "really" mind control devices. Well at least thats their side of the story ;-). You can also compare this attitude to a heart transplant recipient who says he doesn't want the heart if it came from a black, brown, or yellow person. In that case the hatred is race based but it is exactly the same thing as we have here. Hate is hate no matter what "form" it takes or "excuse" it makes. But in the end, the only person who suffers is the harborer of hate. I sorry Ben hates me so much but i cannot change this, only he can. I do hope he relieves himself from his cocoon of hate and misery and then metamorphosis into a free and happy life. But again that is up to our friend Ben. Good night folks.
From: Steven D'Aprano on 9 Jun 2010 02:05 On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:58:26 -0700, rantingrick wrote: > We have a problem You keep saying that, but you've given no good reasons for why we should believe you, or what the nature of this problem supposedly is. The current situation has broad community support: there's a relatively lightweight GUI toolkit that ships with Python (Tkinter), even if it's not beloved by all neither is it especially hated, and an extremely healthy ecosystem of many alternative GUIs built on top of Qt, wxWindows, GTK+, and others. Where's the problem? > So keep the ideas rolling in people. We need to hear from every side of > this forum. I think the only way to end this pointless discussion is this: "Hitler would have loved Tkinter!" Now that we've run into Godwin's Law, can we get back to something more productive? No need to thank me. -- Steven
From: Robert Kern on 9 Jun 2010 02:12 On 6/9/10 1:12 AM, rantingrick wrote: > On Jun 8, 10:09 pm, Robert Kern<robert.k...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> It means that he, very charitably, gives new irritants the benefit of the doubt. >> By changing identities, you are abusing this good behavior. By connecting your >> identity to the previous one, his doubt is removed. > > And again you miss the very meat and potatoes of my post. Sadly like > Ben you're so blinded by animosity that you cannot see. He kill-filed > me because he is so vehemently against me on a personal level. You can read minds? > So much > against me that even the sight of the very words i write send him into > fits of uncontrollable rage. And clairvoyance! Such wonders! > This must be the case or why would he > need to hide his eyes completely from my words. Could he not just > exercise a bit of self restraint and skip my posts if they start to > annoy too much? Yes, he is. He happens to be using a technological aid in order to do so efficiently. You misunderstand the purpose of a kill-file. > Apparently not. He is unable to control his actions so > he must go to the extreme of kill-file. > > But you know i think it boils down to fear really. He is comfortable > in his life and wishes to keep it as cookie cutter as he can. Any > outside influence must be quashed before these meddling forces can > take hold of him. He is so fearful of seeing the light in an opposing > argument that blinding himself from reality is easier than facing > reality. Ah, so you are a psychoanalyst, too? Amazing! -- Robert Kern "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco
From: Gregory Ewing on 9 Jun 2010 02:45
Kevin Walzer wrote: > PyGUI ... certainly is *not* a lightweight GUI toolkit that could > easily be incorporated into the Python core library--it instead has > rather complex dependencies on both other GUI toolkits and Python > wrappers of those toolkits. I don't see how the dependencies could be regarded as "complex". There's more or less only one on each platform, and they're pretty standard accessories for the platform concerned. You could say there are two on Linux if you count gtk itself, but you almost certainly already have it these days if you're running any kind of desktop at all. It's true that just having PyGUI itself in the standard library wouldn't be sufficient, but that's also true of Tkinter today -- you need Tcl/Tk installed in order to use it, and that doesn't come bundled with Python on all platforms. The same thing applies to some other stdlib modules, such as sqlite. So just having a dependency doesn't necessarily preclude a package from being included in the stdlib. Having said all that, I would like to eliminate some of the depedencie. At some point I'll probably re-do the Windows implementation using ctypes, because pywin32/mfc is hindering more than helping in some areas. I'm also thinking about ways to interface directly with Cocoa without going through pyobjc. But all that is some way off in the future after I get the API nailed down more. -- Greg |