GUIs - A Modest Proposal
in [Python]
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From: rantingrick on 10 Jun 2010 19:16 On Jun 10, 5:26 pm, Mark Roseman <m...(a)markroseman.com> wrote: > Discounting completely and without evidence or reason the considerable > amount of volunteer work that continues to go into Tkinter (and Tk) and > the people who use both does not help you advance your case. Mark, I am in no way trying to harm your efforts. Please believe me. The work you have done at tkdocs is wonderful! It covers all four languages in a beautiful way, and i applaud your contributions. And lets not forget about Fredrik Lundh and all his great contributions to Tkinter, PIL, and more. But don't fear losing Tkinter in the stdlib, oh no. Actually i think Tkinter would evolve far more quickly "outside" of Python. It will be a metamorphosis from a cocoon of contempt into an unhindered bliss of release cycles. Free of the py-version shackles that bind it. Free of the contempt that haunts it. Free to grow, free to be, but always free to you and me n form of download. However, i must defend my statements concerning Tk's lack of a rich widget set. They are as true as the sky is blue --on sunny days that is ;-)
From: Steven D'Aprano on 10 Jun 2010 21:05 On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:16:41 -0700, rantingrick wrote: > But don't fear losing Tkinter in the stdlib, oh no. Actually i think > Tkinter would evolve far more quickly "outside" of Python. It will be a > metamorphosis from a cocoon of contempt into an unhindered bliss of > release cycles. Free of the py-version shackles that bind it. Free of > the contempt that haunts it. Free to grow, free to be, but always free > to you and me n form of download. Sheesh, whatever drugs you're on, you need to cut back on them. This reminds me of time-travellers suffering from "time lag" in the wonderful novel "To Say Nothing Of The Dog" by Connie Willis. > However, i must defend my statements concerning Tk's lack of a rich > widget set. They are as true as the sky is blue --on sunny days that > is ;-) That's not defending, that's merely repeating. What widgets do you think Tk is missing? -- Steven
From: rantingrick on 10 Jun 2010 21:41 On Jun 10, 8:05 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...(a)REMOVE-THIS- cybersource.com.au> wrote: > What widgets do you think Tk is missing? The big ones: - Grid - ListCtrl - EditableListCtrl - glCanvas I can think of many more useful compound widgets too. And don't try and tell me these are not important. Yes you could create the first three yourself, but this should not be necessary in the 21st century. How long has GUI been with us...? glCanvas should be standard part of any "non-legacy" GUI. Yes you can download Togl (a third party module) but that is no excuse. Tk has had years to improve and we have seen almost nothing! Wait a minute Steven, are you fighting *for* Tkinter now? I thought you did not use those "graphical interfaces"?
From: Stephen Hansen on 10 Jun 2010 22:38 On 6/10/10 6:41 PM, rantingrick wrote: > On Jun 10, 8:05 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...(a)REMOVE-THIS- > cybersource.com.au> wrote: >> What widgets do you think Tk is missing? > > The big ones: > > - Grid > - ListCtrl > - EditableListCtrl > - glCanvas > > I can think of many more useful compound widgets too. And don't try > and tell me these are not important. Yes you could create the first > three yourself, but this should not be necessary in the 21st century. > How long has GUI been with us...? You're starting to become boring, man. On the one hand, you're arguing for getting rid of Tkinter and replacing it with something less comprehensive (simple, small, you said). On the other hand, you blast Tkinter for not being comprehensive. You can't have it both ways. Also-- you're just starting to get wrong. http://docs.python.org/library/tix.html They don't -call- them the things you are, but between ComboBox, and the flexibility of HList and TList... it actually offers quite a lot. And there are extensions you can download if there's more. And you can make apps with native look and feel-- or close enough to it. > glCanvas should be standard part of any "non-legacy" GUI. Yes you can > download Togl (a third party module) but that is no excuse. Tk has had > years to improve and we have seen almost nothing! Yeah... no. OpenGL is one of those things that belongs firmly not in the standard library. > Wait a minute Steven, are you fighting *for* Tkinter now? I thought > you did not use those "graphical interfaces"? And I do not use tkinter (usually). People can recognize you're really, really, really wrong and really, really, really off your rocket without actually using the module you don't like. :P -- Stephen Hansen ... me+list/python (AT) ixokai (DOT) io
From: Stephen Hansen on 10 Jun 2010 22:49
On 6/9/10 11:40 PM, Gregory Ewing wrote: > Lie Ryan wrote: > >> Doesn't Mac uses an X server as well? > > You can run one optionally if you want, but its native > graphics system is *not* based on X11. It has a window > server, but the protocol is completely different. The > details are shrouded in mysteries known only to Apple, > but I gather it's based on PDF drawing operations. > > As far as I know, there is no separate "window manager" > process -- the window server itself takes care of > drawing and managing the window decorations, and there > is no published way of overriding how it does that. Just as an aside, in case anyone's curious-- to expand on Greg's answer (as I don't have the original to reply to presently)-- The window manager is Quartz Compositor, which shows up as the WindowServer process (or something very like it). It handles loading image buffers in and out of memory and layering them, and doing event processing (i.e., determining which actual window gets this key event) and mediating interactions and such things. It doesn't do PDF-ish stuff; that's the Quartz 2D part, which is the window rendering subsystem. Then again, all of the different parts of the graphics layer are just usually called Quartz, and unless you're working for Apple you don't really care-- so calling Quartz the rendering engine and window manager and just hand-waving it all together is perfectly fine :) X11.app runs as a regular app on top of all of this. Regular users can't be allowed to see programs that run under X11. It will alarm and offend their sensibilities. We macophiles are a touchy bunch about user interface. -- Stephen Hansen ... me+list/python (AT) ixokai (DOT) io P.S. As a further aside, Quartz Compositor is GPU-accelerated, the rendered image gets loaded into the GPU just as a texture surface, and it lets the GPU compose them together once it decides on their order and placement and any effects that it wants to apply. Its nice. And some day, Apple will turn on Quartz 2D Extreme, which moves all the rendering routines into the GPU too. (I have no idea why they still haven't turned it on in 10.6) P.P.S. The above statements are not meant to be 'my platform is better then yours'; I'm quite certain Windows has all kinds of GPU acceleration of the basic interface (at least with Aero). And I haven't tried to run Linux outside of a terminal-only non-GUI context in years to check up on it. I'm just musing. :P P.P.P.S. I am done asiding now. Honest. Back to the endless argument. |