Python GUI toolkit

[default]

what would be the best python GUI toolkit, it must be cross platform.

i have tried gtk, but it interface are real bad and its coding was difficult
so i dropped it,

the only remaining are qt4 and wx, i would like to know if one of these or
any other toolkit is capable of creating good-looking GUI's, like in other
apps, for e.g, .net apps.

i m a noob, and willing to learn, so difficulty is no problem

 

[Grant Edwards]

[...] was difficult so i dropped it,
[...]

i m a noob, and willing to learn, so difficulty is no problem

On the contrary, it appears that difficulty is a problem.

 

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

[...]

the only remaining are qt4 and wx, i would like to know if one of
these or any other toolkit is capable of creating good-looking
GUI's, like in other apps, for e.g, .net apps.

I think both Qt4 and wx create good-looking GUIs, since Qt4 now
tries to use the widgets from the platform it's running on.
However, their ways of expressing things in the code are very
different. If you really have no other constraints, I'd just
program a non-trivial but very simple application in both. Then you
know which fits your brain better.

For example, I've never managed to understand this signal-slot idea
of Qt, so I use wxPython. However, many love Qt exactly for this.

Tschö,
Torsten.

 

[Grant Edwards]

I would recommend Qt, as it is cross-platform and can look native on
all systems.

Qt doesn't look native on my system. I run XFCE, and "native"
is GTK.

Opera, KDE, GoogleEarth, Acrobat, and lots of other software
are written in Qt.

And they don't look native on systems that don't use Qt as the
native widget set.

 

[Grant Edwards]

Hallöchen!

[...]

the only remaining are qt4 and wx, i would like to know if one of
these or any other toolkit is capable of creating good-looking
GUI's, like in other apps, for e.g, .net apps.

I think both Qt4 and wx create good-looking GUIs, since Qt4 now
tries to use the widgets from the platform it's running on.

Really? Qt uses GTK when running uder Gnome or XFCE??

 

[Jorge Godoy]

Qt doesn't look native on my system. I run XFCE, and "native"
is GTK.


And they don't look native on systems that don't use Qt as the
native widget set.

But then, there's no toolkit that does.

GTK based toolkits don't look native on Qt based systems. Same for a lot of
others.

What you can define is a platform as in operating system and then go with
what the mainstream providers use for that. For Windows and Mac that is
easy, for *nix this is harder.

 

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

Hallöchen!

[...]

the only remaining are qt4 and wx, i would like to know if one
of these or any other toolkit is capable of creating
good-looking GUI's, like in other apps, for e.g, .net apps.

I think both Qt4 and wx create good-looking GUIs, since Qt4 now
tries to use the widgets from the platform it's running on.

Really? Qt uses GTK when running uder Gnome or XFCE??

I said "try". You won't find a toolkit which mimics every desktop
environment. However, Qt used to ignore the current look-and-feel
deliberately.

Tschö,
Torsten.

 

[Grant Edwards]

But then, there's no toolkit that does.

GTK based toolkits don't look native on Qt based systems.
Same for a lot of others.

Quite true.

What you can define is a platform as in operating system and
then go with what the mainstream providers use for that. For
Windows and Mac that is easy, for *nix this is harder.

*nix users are pretty tolerant of "non-native" wiget sets. I
imagine that all KDE users have certain non-Qt apps that they
use regularly and Gnome/XFCE users have non-GTK apps they use
regularly.

 

[miller.paul.w]

what would be the best python GUI toolkit, it must be cross platform.

i have tried gtk, but it interface are real bad and its coding was difficult
so i dropped it,

[...]

If "cross-platform," and "nice API" are your requirements, I recommend
you investigate Tkinter. I find it fairly easy to get my head around,
and it's available nearly everywhere Python is. It doesn't even
depend on gtk or qt. The widgets are fairly basic, but you can create
compound widgets in Python by composing the basic widgets, and there
are extensions like Tix and Python Megawidgets that give you more
widgets to work with.

If you want to see a couple examples of what can be done with Tkinter,
take a look at idle (the IDE that comes with most Python
distributions), and pysol (a solitaire game written in Python using
Tkinter).

 

[Gary Herron]

what would be the best python GUI toolkit, it must be cross platform.

i have tried gtk, but it interface are real bad and its coding was difficult
so i dropped it,

the only remaining are qt4 and wx, i would like to know if one of these or
any other toolkit is capable of creating good-looking GUI's, like in other
apps, for e.g, .net apps.

Not true! There are *many* more widget toolkits out there. Dozens!

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits

Gary Herron

 

[miller.paul.w]

I'd like to offer you one suggestion about coding your app. You'll be
best served if you can either write it as a command-line app and write
a separate GUI-front end for it, or use an abstraction layer between
your app and the display logic that allows you to easily plug in other
GUI toolkits. That way, you can support qt, GTK, wx, Tkinter, or any
combination of those just by modifying your display abstraction
layer. Your main app code never needs to be touched.

Depending on the scope of your project, this may or may not be worth
your time, but you should at least consider it.

 

[Benjamin]

Hallöchen!

(e-mail address removed) writes:

[...]
the only remaining are qt4 and wx, i would like to know if one of
these or any other toolkit is capable of creating good-looking
GUI's, like in other apps, for e.g, .net apps.

I think both Qt4 and wx create good-looking GUIs, since Qt4 now
tries to use the widgets from the platform it's running on.

Really? Qt uses GTK when running uder Gnome or XFCE??

Qt doesn't use the any of the native APIs for making widgets. (Well,
it does on Mac and later Window's versions but that's beside the
point.) It draws a the widgets itself. So, it can use the Cleanlooks
style on GNOME which is supposed to imitate the GTK widgets and style.

 

[David Cook]

what would be the best python GUI toolkit, it must be cross platform.

i have tried gtk, but it interface are real bad and its coding was difficult
so i dropped it,

the only remaining are qt4 and wx, i would like to know if one of these or
any other toolkit is capable of creating good-looking GUI's, like in other
apps, for e.g, .net apps.

i m a noob, and willing to learn, so difficulty is no problem

The real way to see is by installing each along with their respective demos,
looking over some of the demo code, and perhaps coding some simple apps in
each.

Qt4 has the most polished and complete API. When judging looks under the
X-Window System, make sure to run qtconfig and try some of the other themes.

WX seems to have more design warts (the layout system takes some getting
used to), but is quite capable and flexible and probably has the most native
look and feel under win32. The license is much more liberal for commercial
use. Also, it comes with OS/X (both Tiger and Leopard), is easy to
install under MSWindows).

Dave Cook

 

[TerryP]

what would be the best python GUI toolkit, it must be cross platform.

i have tried gtk, but it interface are real bad and its coding was
difficult so i dropped it,

the only remaining are qt4 and wx, i would like to know if one of these or
any other toolkit is capable of creating good-looking GUI's, like in other
apps, for e.g, .net apps.

i m a noob, and willing to learn, so difficulty is no problem

I have only used the Qt bindings for GUI programming with Python or for that
matter GUI programming in any language I know beyond various toolkits
tutorials.


I'm more accustomed code wise to the style of interface provided by the
applications in /usr/bin/ on my workstation. So I like that Qt cuts the
crap and provides good stuff without more nuisance then is necessary to get
a functional GUI finished.