Is there a graphical GUI builder?

[Dietmar Schwertberger]

Am 19.02.2013 23:19, schrieb Rex Macey:

I'm new to Python and only a hobbyist programmer.
A long time ago I used Microsoft's Visual Basic which had a nice (graphical) facility for creating GUIs which was part of the development environment.

There are GUI builders, but unfortunately there's none which is as
easy to use as VB where the GUI builder and the rest of the programming
environment / language are tightly integrated.

Have a look at the GUI toolkits wxPython and PyQt.
Then have a look at the GUI builders like Qt Designer,
wxFormBuilder and wxGlade. Maybe also wxDesigner.

For the builder itself, you will probably like Qt Designer most.
But as with the other GUI builders, it generates resource files
or Python source code which then you will need to import into your
Python project and manually link GUI and code. Compared to the VB
way, this is a huge step backwards and also this means that you need
to know and remember a lot about the underlying toolkit.

You will probably end up coding your GUIs manually, which is the
best way for complex things anyway.

Unfortunately, that's a blocking point for many usage scenarios,
e.g. when you want to sell Python as replacement for VB...


Regards,

Dietmar

 

[Michael Torrie]

2. Qt isn't 'free' (depending on what you are going to be doing with it)
- read the licensing rules.

How so? It's LGPL. You can't get much freer than that. Both in terms of
code and developer freedom, and proprietary freedom.

 

[PythonAB]

How so? It's LGPL. You can't get much freer than that. Both in terms of
code and developer freedom, and proprietary freedom.

well that can be discussed... (BSD, MIT, Apache, CDDL)

Anyway, maybe the OP can have a look at PySide which was
developed after Riverbank Comp didn't want to offer PyQt as LGPL.

In my opinion Qt is by far the most developed GUI available for Python,
and it will be even bigger in the near future with support for iOS and Android.

gr
arno

 

[Chris Angelico]

well that can be discussed... (BSD, MIT, Apache, CDDL)

You can argue about which is the "best" license to use (I don't
personally like the GPL and LGPL, and don't use them on my creations),
but Steve's description that its free status depends on what you're
doing with it implies a fairly major violation of the principles of
software freedom, which I would expect *all* the popular open-source
licenses to be correct on.

ChrisA

 

[Steve Simmons]

You can argue about which is the "best" license to use (I don't
personally like the GPL and LGPL, and don't use them on my creations),
but Steve's description that its free status depends on what you're
doing with it implies a fairly major violation of the principles of
software freedom, which I would expect *all* the popular open-source
licenses to be correct on.

ChrisA

I downloaded my copy when Qt was in Nokia's hands at which time there
was a paid for license for commercial development and a 'free' community
license. I thought that situation remained but if things have changed
since the change of ownership (guardianship?), then I apologise for
being out of date - as so many parts of me are

Steve

 

[Roland Koebler]

Hi,

How so? It's LGPL. You can't get much freer than that.

you can -- MIT/BSD/public domain etc. provide much more freedom to the
developer. (And I prefer freedom for the developer over the guarantee
(freedom or restriction -- call it as you wish) that nobody may lock
down a copy of the sourcecode.)

In addition, using the LGPL-version of Qt for proprietary/commercial
software may be risky, because if you violate the LGPL by accident
(e.g. because of some formal issue), the Qt-owner may demand
compensation, e.g. the license-fee for the commercial Qt version
for the last couple of years...

regards
Roland

 

[Robert Kern]

I downloaded my copy when Qt was in Nokia's hands at which time there was a paid
for license for commercial development and a 'free' community license. I
thought that situation remained but if things have changed since the change of
ownership (guardianship?), then I apologise for being out of date - as so many
parts of me are

The situation has not substantively changed, but your description of it is not
really accurate. There was and still is a "commercial license" which allows for
completely proprietary development without needing to allow end users to relink
the application against user-supplied versions of Qt. The free license is the
LGPL, which really is Free under all common understandings of that term. You can
use the LGPL license for commercial and otherwise-proprietary applications. You
just have to follow the terms of the LGPL like normal.

--
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

 

[Roland Koebler]

Hi,

The situation has not substantively changed, but your description of
it is not really accurate. There was and still is a "commercial
license" which allows for completely proprietary development without
needing to allow end users to relink the application against
user-supplied versions of Qt. The free license is the LGPL,

that's not quite correct; things have changed 2009 and Qt now has three
different licenses:
- commercial licence
- GPL (+GPL exceptions)
- LGPL + Qt LGPL Exception (because of inline-functions/templates)
since Qt 4.5

best regards
Roland

 

[Robert Kern]

Hi,

that's not quite correct; things have changed 2009 and Qt now has three
different licenses:
- commercial licence
- GPL (+GPL exceptions)
- LGPL + Qt LGPL Exception (because of inline-functions/templates)
since Qt 4.5

True, there are three options, but this was the case under Nokia too, which was
the time period that Steve was talking about. His description that "Qt isn't
'free' (depending on what you are going to be doing with it)" doesn't apply to
this either. Or the previous iteration under late-period TrollTech, for that matter.

--
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