GUIs - A Modest Proposal
in [Python]
|
From: Kevin Walzer on 11 Jun 2010 09:46 On 6/11/10 7:48 AM, Andreas Waldenburger wrote: > I have a strong suspicion that Tkinter may be used a lot more than is > made public (isn't anything?). I'm especially thinking about scientists > who write special purpose data processing or control programs with > basic GUIs. These things don't have to be pretty or anything and it is > a HUGE advantage if you don't have to jump through any hoops to get it > to run on different platforms. > > /W > Good point .Tkinter is very widely used in scientific visualization software: UCSF Chimera http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/ PyMOL http://www.pymol.org/ There are others, no doubt. -- Kevin Walzer Code by Kevin http://www.codebykevin.com
From: Mark Lawrence on 11 Jun 2010 10:06 On 11/06/2010 12:48, Andreas Waldenburger wrote: > On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:00:37 -0700 (PDT) rantingrick > <rantingrick(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Jun 11, 12:17 am, ant<shi...(a)uklinux.net> wrote: >>> I like the points about backwards compatibility. Presumably that >>> reason alone is enough to keep Tkinter in the standard library for a >>> long while. >> >> I don't see why that is a good reason. Download Tkinter and your >> backward compatible again. The majority don't use it anyway. I would >> bet that only myself, Kevin, and only a handful of others use Tkinter >> for anything more than education purposes. > > I have a strong suspicion that Tkinter may be used a lot more than is > made public (isn't anything?). I'm especially thinking about scientists > who write special purpose data processing or control programs with > basic GUIs. These things don't have to be pretty or anything and it is > a HUGE advantage if you don't have to jump through any hoops to get it > to run on different platforms. > > /W > To quote R. David Murray on the Python bug tracker earlier today. "Everyone who uses IDLE uses TKInter, and a lot of people use IDLE." Kindest regards. Mark Lawrence.
From: Jean-Michel Pichavant on 11 Jun 2010 10:40 Andreas Waldenburger wrote: > On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:00:37 -0700 (PDT) rantingrick > <rantingrick(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >> On Jun 11, 12:17 am, ant <shi...(a)uklinux.net> wrote: >> >>> I like the points about backwards compatibility. Presumably that >>> reason alone is enough to keep Tkinter in the standard library for a >>> long while. >>> >> I don't see why that is a good reason. Download Tkinter and your >> backward compatible again. The majority don't use it anyway. I would >> bet that only myself, Kevin, and only a handful of others use Tkinter >> for anything more than education purposes. >> > > I have a strong suspicion that Tkinter may be used a lot more than is > made public (isn't anything?). I'm especially thinking about scientists > who write special purpose data processing or control programs with > basic GUIs. These things don't have to be pretty or anything and it is > a HUGE advantage if you don't have to jump through any hoops to get it > to run on different platforms. > > /W > > Moreover, the majority of the python scripts/applications do not require any GUI, the majority of those which require a GUI don't require to be pretty anyway. JM
From: rantingrick on 11 Jun 2010 12:17 On Jun 11, 9:06 am, Mark Lawrence <breamore...(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > "Everyone who uses IDLE uses TKInter, and a lot of people use IDLE." That sounds like hyperbole to me. What evidence do you have to made such a statement. What evidence do *I* have to make the opposing statement. We don't, so add the warning and put your money where your mouth is instead of your foot :-!
From: Stephen Hansen on 11 Jun 2010 13:31
On 6/10/10 10:17 PM, ant wrote: > So would it be so awful to have Tkinter and GUI2 (whatever it is) in > the stdlib, assuming that both had equivalent functionality? That > would be the way to give people the choice. There's some slight precedent, in that the stdlib does offer more then one "xml" library -- from the suck of minidom, to sax, to elementtree. Then again they all sort of address slightly different domains of problems related to xml. Then there's urllib/urllib2 -- but usually, if one library duplicates the intent of another, they only co-exist until such time as the old one can Go Away. (Exactly how long that is, depends: some 'to go away' libraries can survive a very long time due to major usage). That said, I'd be worried about-- > But it does imply that GUI2 is not too huge, to prevent excessive > bloat (is that a tautology?). When you factor in dependencies, it might be a lot. Then again, it might not. Not counting dependencies, PyGUI seems reasonably sized -- the other major GUI's? Way too big. > Other interesting comments: licencing. Can anyone give a concise > summary of whether the 'major' GUIs have any insuperable licencing > problems that would rule them out anyway? Programming is hard enough > without lawyers. wxPython (and its dependency, wxWidgets) has a custom license, but its very Python-like. Meaning, its essentially 'do whatever you want, open, closed, commercial, charity, whatever'. QT is LGPL -- and although you can technically include LGPL stuff in non-[L]GPL libs, I don't think its policy in Python to allow it. It creates a burden / obligation. PyQT is GPL, so impossible to include at all. PySide, Nokia's answer to PyQt not changing their licensing terms when Nokia acquired TrollTech, is LGPL. Technically possible, but I don't think its allowable. PyGTK is LGPL. Same issues: and this raises a question with regards to PyGUI, which uses pygtk on linux to create its UI. I don't remember what other UI libs are out there. I might be wrong on the LGPL policy bit. But the only stuff I'm aware of that Python bundles (i.e., zlib, sqlite) have the permissive 'do whatever' type of license. I don't believe Python wants to create a situation where any burden is placed on someone who embeds it. -- Stephen Hansen ... me+list/python (AT) ixokai (DOT) io |