GUI - Windows: Where to get started

[Ernesto]

Hi all,

Would anyone know a good place to start for learning how to build
simple GUI's in Windows XP? I just want users to be able to select a
few parameters from a pull-down menu, then be able to run some batch
files using the parameters from the pull down menus. I would also need
a "Browse" menu, so users could point to a place on the local disc (ie
C:\PointSystemHere). Can anyone give a noob some tips? THANKS!!!

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=C1ngel_Guti=E9rrez_Rodr=EDguez?=]

Well, Tkinter module (Tk) would be the simplestway to do it.. and it is
included in your Windows Python distribution...

 

[Caleb Hattingh]

Probably, the best place for learning how to build GUI's for Windows, in
general, is to get hold the personal edition of Delphi from the Borland
website. If you want something more specific to Python, it is likely to
be much tougher. You would, for example, have to decide which widget
toolkit you want to use. Also, you would have to decide if you want to do
GUI-building via text-files or through a graphical method. The simplest
method (for the latter) I have seen so far is Glade, but perhaps other
posters will have better advice than me.

rgds
Caleb

 

[Peter Hansen]

Would anyone know a good place to start for learning how to build
simple GUI's in Windows XP? I just want users to be able to select a
few parameters from a pull-down menu, then be able to run some batch
files using the parameters from the pull down menus. I would also need
a "Browse" menu, so users could point to a place on the local disc (ie
C:\PointSystemHere).

If you would like to try using wxPython, download and install both it
and the Demo/Docs package, then run the wxPython Demo from your Start
Menu. It demonstrates a huge variety of features, including pull-down
menus and even (as I recall) running external commands, and more than
that the demo itself provides access to the source code for each feature
so that you can copy and paste into your own program (and edit, of
course, since it's never a perfect fit as-is).

Of course wxPython is just one possible approach to doing GUI work with
Python, and not necessarily the best. With Python it's easy to quickly
try out each of the main contenders (including Tkinter which, as someone
mentioned, is included standard in Python), so there's no excuse for not
experimenting for an hour first...

-Peter

 

[Peter Decker]

Would anyone know a good place to start for learning how to build
simple GUI's in Windows XP? I just want users to be able to select a
few parameters from a pull-down menu, then be able to run some batch
files using the parameters from the pull down menus. I would also need
a "Browse" menu, so users could point to a place on the local disc (ie
C:\PointSystemHere). Can anyone give a noob some tips? THANKS!!!

wxPython is (IMO) the best-looking and most flexible UI toolkit out
there, but the code can be fairly un-Pythonic. I've started using
Dabo, which includes a wrapper around wxPython that makes UI coding
clean and very Pythonic. While Dabo is an entrie application
framework, you can just use the UI stuff if you want.

There is also a Windows runtime that will install Python, wxPython,
Dabo, and everything else you need to create and run Dabo apps. No
need to hassle with multiple installs just to try it out.

You can get Dabo at http://dabodev.com

 

[Cappy2112]

if you want something one step simpler than wX & TK take a look at

http://www.averdevelopment.com/python/EasyDialogs.html

or

http://www.ferg.org/easygui/index.html

You loose a lot of flexibility, but get ultra simple (and
plain-looking) widgets, without all of the complexity of of a gui
Framework, expecially wx.
This is a quick and dirty way to add some really simple dialogues to a
Python program.
But you don't get exposed to the concepts you need to know to work with
a full-powered framework.

Try PythonCard, for a framework that abstracts wx even further, but
still providing most of the functionality (if not all of it) of wx.

Alo take a look at QT/pyQT (another framework and it's wrapper)

 

[paron]

Hi all,

Would anyone know a good place to start for learning how to build
simple GUI's in Windows XP? I just want users to be able to select a
few parameters from a pull-down menu, then be able to run some batch
files using the parameters from the pull down menus. I would also need
a "Browse" menu, so users could point to a place on the local disc (ie
C:\PointSystemHere). Can anyone give a noob some tips? THANKS!!!

You probably already know HTML. You might use CherryPy and put the GUI
in a browser. See http://www.cherrypy.org/wiki/SingleClickAndRun for
demo code.

I think it's the simplest GUI going for python, plus your users already
know a lot about how to use a browser.

Ron

 

[Ernesto]

THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR RESPONSES!!!!! I will look into everything
and find what's right for my project.

 

[Larry Bates]

First you need to pick up a copy of Python Programming for Win32
book. It is a good starting place for GUI as well as COM and
writing services. It was well worth the price to me.

-Larry