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invitro81
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 3
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 Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:36 pm Post subject:
Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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Hello
I've recently learnt python and I do love it! I congratulate all those
geeks who produce this nice language; well, because I could be called a
nearby newbee I've decided to improve my abilities by writing my own
nice editor with python; so I've to choose among all those GUI toolkit's
available there..
But I've no idea which one I should use to start with.. I've read that
tkinter seems to be the de facto standart in the pyhon community; but
why? Is it the best available one or are theire other reasons? I read
also a litte about wxpython and pygtk.. both are appealing to me but
again to make a choice is difficult; is there also some guy liking pyqt
is it worse or should it be avoided because of the licencing policy for
qt (which I also like..)?
* Which one is the most fun to program with?
* Which one is the most easy to learn?
* Which one looks best?
* Which one is the most productive to program with? |
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wjzrules@gmail.com
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 18 Oct 2005
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:57 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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invitro81 schreef:
| Quote: | Hello
I've recently learnt python and I do love it! I congratulate all those
geeks who produce this nice language; well, because I could be called a
nearby newbee I've decided to improve my abilities by writing my own
nice editor with python; so I've to choose among all those GUI toolkit's
available there..
But I've no idea which one I should use to start with.. I've read that
tkinter seems to be the de facto standart in the pyhon community; but
why? Is it the best available one or are theire other reasons? I read
also a litte about wxpython and pygtk.. both are appealing to me but
again to make a choice is difficult; is there also some guy liking pyqt
is it worse or should it be avoided because of the licencing policy for
qt (which I also like..)?
* Which one is the most fun to program with?
* Which one is the most easy to learn?
* Which one looks best?
* Which one is the most productive to program with?
|
Read this http://wxpython.org/quotes.php  |
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Peter Decker
*nix forums addict
Joined: 03 Jul 2005
Posts: 76
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| Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:57 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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On 3/10/06, invitro81 <invitro81@gmx.net> wrote:
| Quote: | But I've no idea which one I should use to start with.. I've read that
tkinter seems to be the de facto standart in the pyhon community; but
why? Is it the best available one or are theire other reasons? I read
also a litte about wxpython and pygtk.. both are appealing to me but
again to make a choice is difficult; is there also some guy liking pyqt
is it worse or should it be avoided because of the licencing policy for
qt (which I also like..)?
* Which one is the most fun to program with?
* Which one is the most easy to learn?
* Which one looks best?
* Which one is the most productive to program with?
|
GUI toolkits are not simple things to be productive with. Most people
I know tried out a few briefly, found one that fit their needs and/or
programming style better, and then adopted that as their choice. Given
the complexity of GUIs in general, developers tend to be 'fluent' in
one at a time - it's just too much to remember when switching between
different kits.
So most of the answers you get will invariably be tilted toward the
choice that an individual made. Their reasons for that choice may not
be the same as your reasons, so my advice to you would be to check
them all out for a few hours apiece, and make a choice based on your
impressions.
Having said that, my choice for UI toolkit is wxPython, based on its
use of native controls on all platforms. I disliked the syntax it
inherited from wxWidgets, the C++ project it is based on, but then I
found Dabo, whose UI layer wraps wxPython, giving you all the power
and beauty of wxPython, with none of the ugliness.
--
# p.d. |
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Eric Brunel
*nix forums addict
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 79
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| Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:06 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:36:18 +0100, invitro81 <invitro81@gmx.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Hello
I've recently learnt python and I do love it! I congratulate all those
geeks who produce this nice language; well, because I could be called a
nearby newbee I've decided to improve my abilities by writing my own
nice editor with python; so I've to choose among all those GUI toolkit's
available there..
But I've no idea which one I should use to start with.. I've read that
tkinter seems to be the de facto standart in the pyhon community; but
why? Is it the best available one or are theire other reasons? I read
also a litte about wxpython and pygtk.. both are appealing to me but
again to make a choice is difficult; is there also some guy liking pyqt
is it worse or should it be avoided because of the licencing policy for
qt (which I also like..)?
* Which one is the most fun to program with?
* Which one is the most easy to learn?
* Which one looks best?
* Which one is the most productive to program with?
|
It all depends on what features are the most important for you. Here is
some help to answer the question yourself:
http://www.awaretek.com/toolkits.html
HTH
--
python -c "print ''.join([chr(154 - ord(c)) for c in
'U(17zX(%,5.zmz5(17;8(%,5.Z65\'*9--56l7+-'])" |
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Thomas Guettler
*nix forums addict
Joined: 23 Feb 2005
Posts: 75
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| Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:50 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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Am Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:36:18 +0100 schrieb invitro81:
| Quote: | Hello
I've recently learnt python and I do love it! I congratulate all those
geeks who produce this nice language; well, because I could be called a
nearby newbee I've decided to improve my abilities by writing my own
nice editor with python; so I've to choose among all those GUI toolkit's
available there..
But I've no idea which one I should use to start with.. I've read that
tkinter seems to be the de facto standart in the pyhon community; but
why?
|
No, tkinter is not the standard. It is justed part of the standard
library.
Here is what I think:
tkinter (or better TK) has no good table widget.
The licence for QT is GPL, this means you cannot use it in commercial
application. That is why I never looked at it.
wx is better than tkinter. But it is big and there are too many
layers: WxPython -> WxWidgets -> gtk
I tried some examples, but it didn't "feel" good.
Now I use pygtk. I code everything, I don't used glade or something
like this.
HTH,
Thomas
--
Thomas Güttler, http://www.thomas-guettler.de/
E-Mail: guettli (*) thomas-guettler + de
Spam Catcher: niemand.leermann@thomas-guettler.de |
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Sybren Stuvel
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 550
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| Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 3:10 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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Thomas Guettler enlightened us with:
| Quote: | The licence for QT is GPL, this means you cannot use it in
commercial application. That is why I never looked at it.
|
Ehmm... from their website:
The Qt Commercial License is the correct license to use for the
construction of proprietary, commercial software. The license allows
you to:
- Build commercial software and software whose source code you
wish to keep private.
- Freely choose licensing for the software you are writing
(Proprietary, Open Source or both).
- Be able to gain access to Qt Solutions, Trolltech support and
commercial-only Qt components such as commercial database
drivers and the Visual Studio Integration on Windows.
Sybren
--
The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
Frank Zappa |
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Cameron Laird
*nix forums Guru Wannabe
Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 257
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| Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:08 pm Post subject:
Bear not false witness (was: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?)
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In article <pan.2006.03.10.14.50.58.975032@thomas-guettler.de>,
Thomas Guettler <niemand.leermann@thomas-guettler.de> wrote:
.
.
.
| Quote: | tkinter (or better TK) has no good table widget.
. |
.
.
<URL: http://tkinter.unpythonic.net/wiki/TkTable >
There are others, even, if that matters. |
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Alan Franzoni
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 12 Dec 2005
Posts: 19
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| Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:07 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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invitro81 on comp.lang.python said:
| Quote: | again to make a choice is difficult; is there also some guy liking pyqt
is it worse or should it be avoided because of the licencing policy for
qt (which I also like..)?
* Which one is the most fun to program with?
* Which one is the most easy to learn?
* Which one looks best?
* Which one is the most productive to program with?
|
Those are all hard questions. You might as well have asked 'which is the
best web framework'. It's not easy to tell ^_^ It highly depends on which
tasks you're aiming at.
wxPython is a pretty good 'all-round' and cross-platform library, and
includes some non-graphical features. It's got a drawback: it's a wrapper
for the wxwidgets library, and hence it's not very pythonic; you can solve
part of its unpythonicness using wax, which is not very well documented at
the time. wxGlade can be used to design GUI apps with little effort.
pyGTK works well, too. Recent versions perform well and are good looking on
Windows systems as well as Linux and Macs (if you provide an X server).
It's very well documented (better than wxPython, in my opinion) and its
license is quite permissive. It's unpythonic just like wxPython. Glade and
Gazpacho can be used to design GUI apps in a visual way.
pyGUI is a pyGTK-based graphic library which is designed from scratch to be
pythonic. It seems very, very promising but I can't tell you if it's
production-stable since I've tested it just a couple of times. It may be
the funniest and more productive toolkit ever.
FLTK was interesting but seems to lack maintenance and support, pyQT is a
bit 'unfree' for most uses. Tkinter is quite old stuff.
--
Alan Franzoni <alan.franzoni.xyz@gmail.com>
-
Togli .xyz dalla mia email per contattarmi.
Rremove .xyz from my address in order to contact me.
-
GPG Key Fingerprint:
5C77 9DC3 BD5B 3A28 E7BC 921A 0255 42AA FE06 8F3E |
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David Boddie
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 01 Jun 2005
Posts: 21
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| Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 3:36 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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Alan Franzoni wrote:
| Quote: | FLTK was interesting but seems to lack maintenance and support,
|
Looking at the News section of the project's home page, I can see
that updates were few and far between in 2004 and 2005, but the
action seems to have picked up again since:
http://pyfltk.sourceforge.net/#news
| Quote: | pyQT is a bit 'unfree' for most uses.
|
"Unfree" as in the opposite of freedom, or "unfree" as in the price of
beer?
PyQt for Qt 3 is available under the GNU General Public License on
Mac OS X and Linux. Since Qt 4 can be used under the GPL on all
platforms, you'll even be able to write software on Windows with PyQt4
that's licensed under a GPL-compatible license.
FAQ: http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/faq.php
Roadmap: http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/roadmap.php
| Quote: | Tkinter is quite old stuff.
|
But actively supported and promoted:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/TkInter
And I'm sure there are plenty of other solutions that deserve to be
mentioned:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/GuiProgramming
David |
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Michael Ekstrand
*nix forums addict
Joined: 06 Sep 2005
Posts: 53
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 12:08 am Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 00:07:52 +0100
Alan Franzoni <alan.franzoni.xyz@gmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: | again to make a choice is difficult; is there also some guy liking
pyqt is it worse or should it be avoided because of the licencing
policy for qt (which I also like..)?
* Which one is the most fun to program with?
* Which one is the most easy to learn?
* Which one looks best?
* Which one is the most productive to program with?
wxPython is a pretty good 'all-round' and cross-platform library, and
includes some non-graphical features. It's got a drawback: it's a
wrapper for the wxwidgets library, and hence it's not very pythonic;
you can solve part of its unpythonicness using wax, which is not very
well documented at the time. wxGlade can be used to design GUI apps
with little effort.
pyGTK works well, too. Recent versions perform well and are good
looking on Windows systems as well as Linux and Macs (if you provide
an X server). It's very well documented (better than wxPython, in my
opinion) and its license is quite permissive. It's unpythonic just
like wxPython. Glade and Gazpacho can be used to design GUI apps in a
visual way.
|
I'll throw my two cents in here now.
I've used both wxPython and PyGTK. I find wxPython to be horribly
un-pythonic; combining that some problems on the Mac, and some
other installation/environment issues, I ditched it for PyGTK.
I find PyGTK to be very natural, and actually highly Pythonic. So much
of its design just makes sense. And GTK provides a lot of nice things,
and is itself incredibly versitle (the places you can put odd
widgets...). I've found myself to be more productive with GTK (both
PyGTK and GTKmm) than with any other system I've used (with the
possible exception of web interfaces).
- Michael
--
mouse, n: a device for pointing at the xterm in which you want to type.
-- Fortune |
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Roger Binns
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 27
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:18 am Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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"invitro81" <invitro81@gmx.net> wrote in message news:441172c2$1@news1.ethz.ch...
| Quote: | But I've no idea which one I should use to start with..
|
One thing you'll need to carefully decide is where you want
to end up. The different toolkits have different limits on
where you can go. A simple example is printing. Some don't
support it (eg Tkinter didn't 5 years ago when I last used it).
If you will never need to print then that won't matter.
Generally what you'll find is that the toolkits that let
you do more are harder to get started with because you have
to code in such a way as to let the more complicated features
(eg printing) work, and the documentation is bigger because
there is more to document.
These are some of those areas to consider:
Printing
Can you print? Does the user get to use their operating
system specific dialog boxes to choose printers etc?
As a developer can you find out if the printer is colour
or black and white? What about the paper size?
HTML
Does the toolkit have a way for you to display HTML? How
complicated can the HTML be (eg CSS)? Can you embed widgets
in the HTML?
Threading
Do you have to confine gui operations to one thread? How do
you send a message from a worker thread to the gui thread
(the gui thread will block in an event loop - that event loop
needs to be able to be woken up from other threads)
Native look and feel
Will your users expect a native looking application? Will they
want drag and drop? Do they expect rich objects on the keyboard?
Is the toolkit available for all platforms you would want to
run on (Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD etc) and their variations
(different processors, 32 and 64 bit runtimes)?
OLE
Can you display other applications as a widget within yours?
What about the other way round? Can you script other applications?
(Python actually has the latter available on many platforms without
the need for the gui toolkit to so)
i18n/l10n
Does the toolkit support Unicode? How easy is it to use with
multiple languages?
Additional packages
What additional packages are there for the toolkit? For example
Pmw provides more widgets to tkinter and their are GL packages
for the various toolkits. If you are going to do graphics heavy
stuff you'll want some way of hooking the toolkit with PIL.
There should be some sort of demo available. wxPython has a fantastic
one showing every single widget with code you edit to see what effect
it has.
The documentation should be good as well. Pick a random question such
as "how do I delete all entries in a listbox begining with 'foo'" and
see if you can work it out from the documentation.
There should also be some sort of mailing list and user forums. Look
for helpful answers being given with people being polite.
What I would suggest you do is write a simple application in two or
three different toolkits (eg convert temperature between F and C).
You'll learn various ways of dealing with widget placement and sizers.
(ie what happens if the user makes the containing window larger or
smaller). My suggestions are to try PyGame, Tkinter and wxPython.
You'll be better off having learned lessons from all 3 than just
using one.
The piece of good news is that to my knowledge applications written
using any of the toolkits can be packaged up using tools like
py2exe/py2app/cx_Freeze so that you can redistribute them to other
users and those users will not have to know or care that you used
Python and whatever toolkit.
Roger |
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invitro81
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:29 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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You guys are great  thanx for the plenty answers and suggestions; I've
made my search through a little more and decided to start coding the
same app first with pygtk and second with wxpython.. and perhaps later
with pyqt. |
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Thomas Guettler
*nix forums addict
Joined: 23 Feb 2005
Posts: 75
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:10 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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Am Fri, 10 Mar 2006 16:10:09 +0100 schrieb Sybren Stuvel:
| Quote: | Thomas Guettler enlightened us with:
The licence for QT is GPL, this means you cannot use it in
commercial application. That is why I never looked at it.
Ehmm... from their website:
|
From http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licensing.html
| Quote: | The Qt Commercial License is the correct license to use for the
construction of proprietary, commercial software. The license allows
you to:
- Build commercial software and software whose source code you
wish to keep private.
- Freely choose licensing for the software you are writing
(Proprietary, Open Source or both).
- Be able to gain access to Qt Solutions, Trolltech support and
commercial-only Qt components such as commercial database
drivers and the Visual Studio Integration on Windows.
|
Have you read all the text?
"""
Two qualities of the Qt Commercial License should be emphasized:
You need it before you start development of proprietary software.
You must purchase a Qt Commercial License from Trolltech or from any of
its authorized resellers before you start developing. The Commercial
license does not allow the incorporation of code developed with the Open
Source Edition of Qt into a proprietary product.
"""
There is a GPL version for Linux. But the GPL does not allow linking
with closed source software.
--
Thomas Güttler, http://www.thomas-guettler.de/
E-Mail: guettli (*) thomas-guettler + de
Spam Catcher: niemand.leermann@thomas-guettler.de |
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Sybren Stuvel
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 550
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:58 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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Thomas Guettler enlightened us with:
| Quote: | There is a GPL version for Linux. But the GPL does not allow linking
with closed source software.
|
The availability of a GPL license does not negate the availability of
a commercial license. You can write commercial, closed source software
on Linux using Qt legally.
Sybren
--
The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
Frank Zappa |
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Alan Franzoni
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 12 Dec 2005
Posts: 19
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| Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:23 pm Post subject:
Re: Which GUI toolkit is THE best?
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Paul Boddie on comp.lang.python said:
| Quote: | Now, since the commercial licence is "per developer", some cunning
outfit could claim that only one developer wrote their product (rather
than one hundred developers, say), but this would be a fairly big
breach of trust (although nothing unusual in the world of commerce, I'm
sure). Would a business making software for other such businesses care
about such things? What kind of recourse would they have?
|
Just one thing I don't understand: if you're developing all your software
inside your company, how would they know if you already coded it or you
still have to?
Also, couldn't a big company buy a *single* commercial license from the
beginning, build a software employing hundreds of developers using the GPL
license, and then distribute the software pretending that the single
developer had done everything? This would hit Trolltech anyway.
I think the problem has to do with the QT license system. It's their
problem, not a developer's one. Also, I suppose one of their commercial
licenses provides with far lot more than a license - e.g. I think they'll
offer support, design tools, additional docs and libraries.
And what would then be their income if they refused to sell you a
commercial license because they *know* you've already coded your app using
the GPL license of Qt? You could simply throw away your app and never
distribute it, and they would'nt see a cent anyway.
Personally, I don't like Qt licensing, since I think there're good widget
sets around that don't have such limitations, but I don't think that people
at Trolltech are really trolls :-=
--
Alan Franzoni <alan.franzoni.xyz@gmail.com>
-
Togli .xyz dalla mia email per contattarmi.
Rremove .xyz from my address in order to contact me.
-
GPG Key Fingerprint:
5C77 9DC3 BD5B 3A28 E7BC 921A 0255 42AA FE06 8F3E |
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