Another alternative are GUI designers such as wxGlade or XRCed, both
of which ship with SPE (
http://pythonide.stani.be). Dabo is especially
usefull (but not limited to) developping database applications as it
is an open source alternative to Visual Fox pro.
Sorry for coming into this discussion late; I was away celebrating
our 21st anniversary with my wife!
I think that the most important thing to consider in deciding
between one or the other is what it is you want to do. PythonCard is
much easier if you want to create a simple GUI app. In fact, when I
first started working with Python, I used PythonCard to develop my
first GUI apps, and we've paid homage to PythonCard in Dabo by
incorporating some of their better ideas.
. The problem I found
was that I quickly ran into a wall where I needed to do something
that PythonCard didn't do, and the workaround was more complex than
if I had started with plain wxPython in the first place. Since at
that time PythonCard didn't support sizers, and I needed cross-
platform apps, it really didn't handle the hard stuff like sizers
very well.
When I started with the Dabo Class Designer, I made it sizer-centric
from the start, since I felt then that sizers are a necessity in UI
design. Yes, we also support fixed-position/size controls, but I
think that the investment in grokking sizers pays off many times
over, especially when you can see exactly how something will look up
front, rather than guessing in code and then modifying your code when
the result isn't what you wanted.
The other thing I would point out is that the Dabo Class Designer is
written in 100% Dabo code: no raw wxPython or external libraries are
used. The Class Designer is probably one of the most complex
applications I have ever written in my 20+ years as a developer, and
Dabo can handle it just fine. To me, that demonstrates that not only
is the UI class library rich and robust, but the event model that we
wrote is also very powerful. If you have an app that requires a more
complex UI than the Dabo Class Designer, I'd sure like to see it!
So if you ask me which product to use, I would naturally be inclined
to say Dabo, but really, the main question is just how complex is
your app. If you need to work with a backend database, well, then
it's a no-brainer - Dabo is designed to handle data as well as any
free or commercial tool on the market. But for a simple UI app, such
as many of the PythonCard demos, I'd have to say that you should look
at both and see which one feels more comfortable to you, and go with
that.
-- Ed Leafe
--
http://leafe.com
--
http://dabodev.com