Python GUI, which one?

[Sells, Fred]

I see there are several different choices for Python GUI API's.

Is there any indication of which ones are
1. the most commonly used?
2. the most reliable?
3. the most robust?

 

[Peter Hansen]

I see there are several different choices for Python GUI API's.

Is there any indication of which ones are
1. the most commonly used?
2. the most reliable?
3. the most robust?

Yes, and not only will Googling the list archives using
Google Groups give you lots of answers to similar questions,
but in addition using Google for the web will bring up
dozens of useful web pages answering just those sorts of
questions.

It would also help, if you want custom answers, to explain
what you mean by reliable and robust. I know what *I* mean
by them, but you're not me... ;-)

-Peter

 

[Neuruss]

I only know 3:

1) Boa Contructor
2) PythonCard
3) BlackAdder (commercial)

Boa seems to be the more complete and popular, but I found it very
cluttered and confusing. I confess I'm a little bit impatient so
perhaps I should have tried harder...other people think it's great.

Pythoncard is a joy to work with. Very easy to learn and use, very
simple (it sticks to the KISS principle). I highly recommend it,
although it may not be as complete as Boa.

These two are based in wxPython, so they are cross-platform and both
will give your apps a native look and feel.

As for BlackAdder, it is commercial and is based in QT. It doesn't
give you a native look in windows but it's ok anyway. I can't say much
because the trial version has a very annoying way of working (it
doesn't let you save your work and it closes every few minutes, so you
never get anything done with it...).

 

[Alex Martelli]

I only know 3:

1) Boa Contructor
2) PythonCard
3) BlackAdder (commercial)

The original question was on Python GUI _APIs_, not on tools too
graphically construct GUI's. The APIs include many cross-platform ones,
such as wxPython, PyQt, Tkinter, PyGTK, and many others, and many
platform-specific ones too (Windows-only, Mac-only, etc).


Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

I see there are several different choices for Python GUI API's.

Is there any indication of which ones are
1. the most commonly used?
2. the most reliable?
3. the most robust?

There are many cross-platform ones, such as wxPython, PyQt, Tkinter,
PyGTK, and many others, and many platform-specific ones too
(Windows-only, Mac-only, etc). Most commonly used is probably still
good old Tkinter: it was the first widespread one and is distributed
with most Python distributions (entirely so, in the case of Windows;
requiring previous installs of Tcl/Tk, elsewhere) as well as used by
IDLE, the simple IDE distributed with Python. I would guess that
wxPython is next most popular (being free everywhere and for any
purpose) and PyQt third (being free only for free software on
non-Windows platforms, but for-pay if you want to develop non-free
software and/or to develop or deploy on Windows).

Not sure how you distinguish reliable from robust, sorry. Tkinter has
been around for a LONG time, and widely used, so I'd guess the bugs must
be out of it by now (it helps that it offers far fewer widgets than the
newer ones: the bigger a library, the buggier it's likely to be). PyQt,
as a product with partially commercial underpinnings, receives much care
in debugging etc, but so does wxPython (and the underlying C++ wxWidgets
toolkit it rests on); sometimes one gets the impression that things are
perennially changing with these, so that something written for 2.4.2
breaks with 2.5.1 (wx), or something written for 3.1 breaks with 3.3
(Qt), so if the holy grail is *stability* you might be happiest with
Tkinter -- tried and true and solid and stable. (but if you're looking
for gee-whizz bazillion of widgets etc etc, that's antithetical....


Alex

 

[Jon Perez]

I see there are several different choices for Python GUI API's.

Is there any indication of which ones are
1. the most commonly used?
2. the most reliable?
3. the most robust?

PyGtk, PyQt, Tkinter, and wxPython are the most
'mature' and widely used.

Greg Ewing's PyGUI (http://nz.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python_gui/)
may be a promising candidate.

But I'm not particularly excited by any of the
above. Instead, I think the 'holy grail' would be
if the Mozilla people became more receptive to the
idea of letting us script XUL via Python (instead of
Javascript).

XUL is both a cross-platform widget toolkit _AND_ GUI
specification language and it is so easy and fast to
use I would rather use it to build a GUI rather
than a visual designer!

Too bad the Mozilla people see XUL's future as more or
less evolving in the direction of Javascript, RDF and
some obscure de jure W3C standards which I highly doubt
will ever see the light of day.

If only some genius could hack the existing XUL widget
toolkit and its XPCOM interfaces to make it scriptable
with Python instead of Javascript. Or, failing that,
recreate an XUL implementation that works with Python
(will not need XPCOM or RDF anymore).

The ideal future would be a Mozilla browser that is
scriptable directly with Python and which also includes
a Python interpreter. That way, you can deploy full-fledged
XUL-based GUI apps (written in Python instead of yucky
Javascript) on the net which will run for anyone who uses
Mozilla.

Javascript + W3C DOM is mediocre at best, and unfixable, so
we should be jumping to XUL for web app UIs instead. And
XUL works just as well for desktop apps as well (as evidenced
by the Mozilla suite of applications incl. FireFox and
Thunderbird).

With speculations that Google might want to make their own
(Mozilla-based?) browser,

http://news.com.com/Clues+may+point+to+Google+browser/2100-1032_3-5379625.html

and knowing that Python is extensively used within the
company, perhaps the time has come for Python to start
supplanting Javascript as the client-side scripting language
of the web, and for XUL to replace W3C DOM/DHTML as the
interface specification language/API for web applications.