Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 10, 3:36 pm, Arnaud Delobelle arno...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 June 2012 07:16, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: This is worth a read in this context:http://osteele.com/archives/2004/11/ides Interesting! I definitely fall nicely at one extreme of this dichotomy. Every time I've tried to use an IDE, it's made me feel inadequate and I've quickly retreated to my comfort zone (emacs + xterm). Here is a more recent discussion in the same vein: http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity-emacs-versus-intellij-idea/ Reddited here: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/vqb9l/programmer_productivity_emacs_versus_intellij_idea/ I felt inadequate because I felt like the IDE was hindering me rather than helping me. All I ask from the program that I use to write code is: * syntax highlighting * sensible auto-indenting * as little reliance on the mouse as possible * emacs key bindings :) To some extent the new article just confirms the old Osteele one: viz. Programmers stuck with java had better spend their time using the most powerful tools to compensate for their inadequate language. However it also indicates the opposite: Benefits of sophisticated refactoring support are almost certainly underestimated by users of vi/emacs. This article makes me feel more positive about my inability to feel comfortable in an IDE. Thanks for the link! -- Arnaud T -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
It would not be difficult to convince me to commit homicide for a Delphi-like Python gui machine that runs on a Linux box. I have played with many - Boa, WxDes, Glade, Tk, Dabo, QtDesigner, Card, etc. Not sure whether you tried it enough on Linux, but Boa (which was intended to be kind of Delphi for Python) *almost* runs OK on Linux. There are a few workarounds to some of the problems and I have a list of the remaining issues. But yes, it's not ideal to use on Linux yet (I have done sort of OK with developing with it on Windows and then using it on Linux to tidy up cross platform incompatibilities in wxPython apps between Win and Linux). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On 6/19/2012 6:07 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote: And the lack of success of Python so far to replace, in your application case, Labview, or, in my application case, all those proprietary 4GL IDEs/frameworks/GUI builders (just check the success that Realbasic has) proves imho that the Python community has totally missed to address the vast crowd of potential users who are domain experts in other domains than software development. Sincerely, Wolfgang I have been compelled to occasionally use LV by my current employer. I do not know if LabView is the disease or is a symptom. It is an evil parasite and has resulted in a disaster at my place of employment and another that I am aware. As for 'designers' and 'builders', the discussion threads on Python gui builders is legion. In the end, the consensus is always to learn one and write the gui. Regardless of the multitude of clever gui libraries, event code in this language seems a bit contrived, and is attractive only to professional programmers. But the community must know that the language is used by hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers that have a job to do, and do not have the time and have no interest in learning the frameworks du jour. This is why I see test and manufacturing engineers refuse to give up VB6 where Windows is required. I disagree with those that say Python can be used as a VB6 replacement. And the touted 'interactive' feature of Python does nothing for gui coding. It would not be difficult to convince me to commit homicide for a Delphi-like Python gui machine that runs on a Linux box. I have played with many - Boa, WxDes, Glade, Tk, Dabo, QtDesigner, Card, etc. Am currently experimenting with IronPython, because the factory boss says no more Linux boxes on his production lines. And the person that said Python is best tool for data acq/hw control needs to get out more. Very dangerous. C first, Python second. This is why I insist on only C and Python for the engineering lab, and use one of three proven pre-coded Tk-based GUIs for production and ATE drivers. You want to argue with me? First come visit my employer's TJ factory and watch the boys test 600kVA transformers or 250kVA inverters. 150,000 A of fault current. Brian -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
In article jr4pcc$fl3$1...@dont-email.me, Kevin Walzer k...@codebykevin.com wrote: On 6/11/12 8:01 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote: Tkinter is imho honestly the very best argument if you want to make potential new users turn their backs away from Python for good. Just show them one GUI implemented with it and, hey, wait, where are you running to... Yes, Tkinter GUI's are very ugly. http://www.codebykevin.com/phynchronicity-running.png I looked it up. What you find ugly, I find unconfusing and clear. If I compare it to usual on the web, it is the difference between a waterfall side and an airport where the personell is on strike. (Oh the noise, the noise is unbearable!). I have not, nor intend to write gui things in Python, I just give an impression. [ I want my gui's to be functional, not beautiful. ] http://www.codebykevin.com/quickwho-main.png -- Kevin Walzer Groetjes Albert -- -- Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. albert@spearc.xs4all.nl =n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On 6/22/2012 11:53 AM, Albert van der Horst wrote: In article jr4pcc$fl3$1...@dont-email.me, Kevin Walzer k...@codebykevin.com wrote: On 6/11/12 8:01 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote: Tkinter is imho honestly the very best argument if you want to make potential new users turn their backs away from Python for good. Just show them one GUI implemented with it and, hey, wait, where are you running to... Yes, Tkinter GUI's are very ugly. http://www.codebykevin.com/phynchronicity-running.png I looked it up. What you find ugly, I find unconfusing and clear. Kevin Walzer is a tk expert. Perhaps you missing the sarcastic irony in what he intended to be a refutation of Wolfgang Keller's comment ;-). -- Terry Jan Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Albert van der Horst於 2012年6月22日星期五UTC+8下午11時53分01秒寫道： In article jr4pcc$fl3$1...@dont-email.me, Kevin Walzer k...@codebykevin.com wrote: On 6/11/12 8:01 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote: Tkinter is imho honestly the very best argument if you want to make potential new users turn their backs away from Python for good. Just show them one GUI implemented with it and, hey, wait, where are you running to... Yes, Tkinter GUI's are very ugly. http://www.codebykevin.com/phynchronicity-running.png I looked it up. What you find ugly, I find unconfusing and clear. If I compare it to usual on the web, it is the difference between a waterfall side and an airport where the personell is on strike. (Oh the noise, the noise is unbearable!). I have not, nor intend to write gui things in Python, I just give an impression. [ I want my gui's to be functional, not beautiful. ] http://www.codebykevin.com/quickwho-main.png -- Kevin Walzer Groetjes Albert -- -- Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. albert@spearc.xs4all.nl =n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst I suggest you can use Python with QT to build some GUI and C++ with QT for similar jobs of the commercial versions in order to test the tools. Nowadays the GUI part is so cheap to build with so manny code generation tools, it is not the same as in the years before 2000. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
No matter how cool it may seem to create simple GUIs manually or to write business letters using LaTeX: just try to persuade people to move from Word to LaTeX for business letters... Good example. I have done nearly exactly this* - but it was only possible thanks to LyX. *I moved not from Wugh, but from other software to LyX/LaTeX for all my document processing. But of course, you were only doing so because you had LyX available, which is the equivalent of an easy-to-use GUI builder. No need to argue here. This was exactly my point. :-) So maybe I should be more precise: just try to persuade people to move from Word to *pure* LaTeX for business letters... Nearly impossible. And this was exactly my point. Again, no need to argue here. :-) The success of LyX (and TeXmacs and BaKoMaTeX and Scientific Word...) proves imho that the LaTeX community had missed to offer a syntax-hiding-GUI with LaTeX some 20 years ago. And the lack of success of Python so far to replace, in your application case, Labview, or, in my application case, all those proprietary 4GL IDEs/frameworks/GUI builders (just check the success that Realbasic has) proves imho that the Python community has totally missed to address the vast crowd of potential users who are domain experts in other domains than software development. Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 12:59:23 -0700 (PDT) CM cmpyt...@gmail.com wrote: On Jun 14, 2:25 pm, Wolfgang Keller felip...@gmx.net wrote: What is needed for domain specialists are frameworks and related tools such as GUI builders that allow them to write exclusively the domain-specific code (this is where a domain specialist will always be better than any software developer), layout the GUI as ergonomically convenient (same) and then have the framework do all the rest. Above this you also mentioned a disdain for the need for glue code, which in the context of your post seemed to be binding to event handlers. With glue code I mean any code other than that which serves to implement purely domain-specific behaviour. So is there a possible way for a GUI builder to *automatically* bind widgets to the appropriate functions in your domain-specific code? It's hard to see how this would be generally possible, even with an AI (maybe a mind-reading AI would work). Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something. Probably, since there are GUI builders/frameworks available that do what I described. I have already pointed to some for my specific type of application (database applications) that don't even need any GUI definition at all, since the GUI is entirely reflected from the domain model. Which I would not consider as the most ergonomic way to define a GUI. Unfortunately these excellent GUI builders and frameworks all use languages which imho are not at all suitable for domain specialists who are not full-time software developers by training. Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 15.06.2012 01:07, schrieb Dennis Lee Bieber: Visual Basic was essentially developed as a unified whole (drop a Sure. I prefer modular approaches. I don't see why this should not be possible (e.g. an IDE like Wing integrates well with other tools and frameworks; I'm sure it could also integrate with a GUI builder). VB6 form module into a pure text editor and look at how much hidden code was embedded)... I did so several times before. It's nothing that you want to create manually, but you can fix small items there and also, being text based, it works with revision control systems and can be printed for documentation purposes. Have you ever seen the crud created by Visual C++? I'd rather create No. And I don't have plans to. C/C++ is good as a system-level language but I don't see the point in using it for implementation of a GUI or business logic. a GUI using Fujitsu COBOL version 4 (unfortunately, the installer that came with my Y2K COBOL book(s) doesn't work on WinXP and I no longer have a Win98 system; wonder if it can run under Win7 using one of the compatibility modes; I think v4 itself would work -- it is just the installer doing something odd; v3, OTOH, is a 16-bit application) If you have access to a Win98 system, you could try to install there an move only the installed program to your current PC (including any DLLs from the system folder). Well-written software does not need an installer. Just move where you want to have it and execute (works well with Python; you can e.g. run a shared installation from the network, even though I would not recommend this for processes requiring highest reliability). IMHO under Windows installers and the crappy start menus are a side effect of the initial decision to separate into File Manager and Program Manager. Other platforms did things better from a UI and technical point of view, but not from a commercial one... (E.g. Acorn's RISC OS where you could even run software from within zip archives as it had the equivalent of user-space file systems twenty years ago already.) Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 13.06.2012 18:30, schrieb rdst...@mac.com: about Google's Blockly a drag and drop tool for building apps that outputs Python or Javascript code (among others) and it might be usable along these lines...I'm sure serious programmers would not use it but maybe engineers looking to make web front ends for data acquisition or data base apps might use it... Actually, there are mouse based tools for engineers, but they are more focused on data flow. For the low level they need to fall back to something similar to Blockly. That's the reason why I don't want to use them. Still they have a significant market share. With Python not having an easy-to-use GUI builder, I don't see how to get people to move from such tools to Python. For the data acquisition and processing itself I could well imagine them to see the potential, but when it comes to implementation of a complete program... (Most people consider a software without GUI as incomplete.) Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Dietmar quotes: With Python not having an easy-to-use GUI builder, The point is, that if you want to promote Python as replacement for e.g. VB, Labview etc., then an easy-to-use GUI builder is required. The typical GUI programs will just have an input mask, a button and one or two output fields. On the other hand, I need to know wx very well to be able to create a GUI using wxGlade as otherwise I will never find where to add e.g. the handlers. But when I know wx very well, then there's no point in using wxGlade. In response to all of these and the general heavily repeated mantra here that there is no easy to use GUI builder for Python, OK, tell you what: describe what the GUI that an engineer would want to make should look like--give all widgets and their bindings--and I will see about making a video that shows how easy this is to do with a GUI builder, even with the user having a very rudimentary (or perhaps zero) knowledge of wxPython. And it will be timed. Let's test your idea for real. (I should note, I don't know what an input mask refers to above). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
None of these were such that I could propagate it as GUI development tool for non-programmers / casual users. Sure, some are good for designing the GUI, but at the point where the user code is to be added, most people would be lost. There was a time when that was a highly advertisable feature - build XYZ applications without writing a single line of code!. That's the typical nonsense cheaptalk of sales promotion advertising, directed at clueless managers. What is needed for domain specialists are frameworks and related tools such as GUI builders that allow them to write exclusively the domain-specific code (this is where a domain specialist will always be better than any software developer), layout the GUI as ergonomically convenient (same) and then have the framework do all the rest. I've seen it in database front-end builders as well as GUI tools, same thing. But those sorts of tools tend not to be what experts want to use. If by experts you mean domain specialists, you're wrong. If you mean full-time software developers, I don't care for what they want, because they already have what they want. And where they don't have it already, they can do it themselves. You end up having to un-learn the easy way before you learn the hard way that lets you do everything. I see no technical reason why a GUI builder would prevent anyone to add customised code by hand. No tool/framework can cover 100%, no doubt. My point is that there are currently no frameworks/tools available for Python that cover the 90/95/98% of use cases where they would help a L-O-T. Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
object mainwindow=GTK2.Window(GTK2.WindowToplevel); mainwindow-set_title(Timing)-set_default_size (400,300)-signal_connect(destroy,window_destroy); GTK2.HbuttonBox btns=GTK2.HbuttonBox()-set_layout(GTK2.BUTTONBOX_SPREAD); foreach (labels,string lbl) btns-add(buttons[lbl]=button(lbl,mode_change)); mainwindow-add(GTK2.Vbox(0,0) -add(GTK2.TextView(buffer=GTK2.TextBuffer())-set_size_request(0,0)) -pack_start(btns,0,0,0))-show_all(); If you're a complete non-programmer, then of course that's an opaque block of text. Thanks for that hideously appalling example of a ridiculously low-level mess. If you're an occasional Python scripting dilettant, this looks like a heap of syntax garbage of exactly that kind that has made me avoid all C-derived languages at university (I'm a mechanical engineer) and that makes me avoid GUI programming with Python so far. If a domain specialist needs an application with a GUI, (s)he typically only wants to have to tell the framework three things: 1. What the domain model looks like (classes, attributes) and what it does in terms of behaviour (domain logic, methods). In my use-cases this would be typically done with SQLalchemy. 2. What the GUI shows of the domain model and how it does it - define menus with entries, layout forms/dialog boxes with fields etc. This should be done without having to permanently look up all the specific details of the API of the GUI framework. 3. What attribute/method of the domain model a GUI element is connected to (sorry for the quotes again). This should be possible in an interactive way, so that you can test whether GUI and code work together as required while defining the connections. Anything else should be done by the framework without the necessity to write a single line of code for the straight forward use cases: - creating, retrieving, updating, deleting instances of domain model classes - setting values of attributes instances of domain model classes - calling methods of instances of domain model classes Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Danger: Flame ahead! I think efforts to make a better, and more definitive, GUI builder for Python should focus on makigng an easy to use IDE for creating these kinds of Python-HTMl-Javascript front ends for applications. The idea of so-called web applications is a cerebral flatulance emanating from braindead morons (typically the pointy-haired type), sorry. From the perspective of the domain specialist who needs to get some work done and who needs to get it done efficiently they are simply unusable. The functionality that such web interfaces provide is ridiculously poor, they are clumsy to use and even worse hourglass-display systems than the junk that MS or SAP sell. Besides the fact that they require obscene amounts of runtime ressources. Besides... Sorry, this subject isn't worth wasting my brain bandwidth on it. I have started to use computers with GEM on Atari ST, MacOS 6.0.7 and DOS 3.3, and if all those web mailers or Google apps had been the only applications available back then I would have never started to use computers at all. In short: web applications are in no way a solution to the mentioned problem, but they make this problem worse by piling up other problems on top of it. End of flame. Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 14, 2:25 pm, Wolfgang Keller felip...@gmx.net wrote: What is needed for domain specialists are frameworks and related tools such as GUI builders that allow them to write exclusively the domain-specific code (this is where a domain specialist will always be better than any software developer), layout the GUI as ergonomically convenient (same) and then have the framework do all the rest. Above this you also mentioned a disdain for the need for glue code, which in the context of your post seemed to be binding to event handlers. So is there a possible way for a GUI builder to *automatically* bind widgets to the appropriate functions in your domain-specific code? It's hard to see how this would be generally possible, even with an AI (maybe a mind-reading AI would work). Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:55:38 +0200, Dietmar Schwertberger wrote: As long as there's no GUI builder for Python, most people will stick to Excel / VBA / VB. No GUI builder for Python? There are plenty. I use wxGlade with wxPython and it works beautifully. It writes the code for the GUI elements, and I put in the event handlers, database access code and so on. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 14.06.2012 22:06, schrieb Colin Higwell: On Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:55:38 +0200, Dietmar Schwertberger wrote: As long as there's no GUI builder for Python, most people will stick to Excel / VBA / VB. No GUI builder for Python? There are plenty. Yes, sorry. I posted that too late in the night. The point was that there's no easy-to-use GUI builder which would allow the casual user to create a GUI. I use wxGlade with wxPython and it works beautifully. It writes the code for the GUI elements, and I put in the event handlers, database access code and so on. Yes, from the ones I've tested, wxGlade came closest to what I was looking for. But still, it's far away from being the tool that is required IMHO. (An it does not seem to be in active development.) Also, with wxGlade you are forced to use sizers - even at positions where they are not useful at all. For simple GUIs that adds a level of complexity which is counter productive. (From the GUI editors that I tried, Qt Creator/Designer was the only one where I agree that it handles sizers/layout containers well.) When I compare e.g. wxGlade to VB6, whether a casual programmer can use it to create a GUI, then still VB6 wins. VB is crap, but at least it allows to create GUIs by using a GUI and will help you getting started in writing GUI applications. It will take only a few minutes to teach someone how to get started. On the other hand, I need to know wx very well to be able to create a GUI using wxGlade as otherwise I will never find where to add e.g. the handlers. But when I know wx very well, then there's no point in using wxGlade. Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 13.06.2012 14:49, schrieb Wolfgang Keller: No matter how cool it may seem to create simple GUIs manually or to write business letters using LaTeX: just try to persuade people to move from Word to LaTeX for business letters... Good example. I have done nearly exactly this* - but it was only possible thanks to LyX. *I moved not from Wugh, but from other software to LyX/LaTeX for all my document processing. But of course, you were only doing so because you had LyX available, which is the equivalent of an easy-to-use GUI builder. So maybe I should be more precise: just try to persuade people to move from Word to *pure* LaTeX for business letters... Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
* Domain experts in fact who would need to implement loads of software to help them get their work done but can't. And since there's no budget for external developers, nothing get's ever done about this. Well, typically or at least very often sooner or later something gets done about this as someone finds out that all could be solved using MS Excel and some macros / VBA programming. MS Excel is unusable for any kind of serious work, due its serious design deficiences. But that's off-topic here. VB(A) is unusable for everyday office automation because it doesn't offer an interactive commandline interpreter. Besides, both only run^H^H^Hlimp on a pathologic non-operating system that's just as unsuitable for any productive work. But that's off-topic, too. I would prefer people to invest the same time into a Python based solution. But then we're back to the initial point: As long as there's no GUI builder for Python, most people will stick to Excel / VBA / VB. There are quite a few GUI builders out there for Python. The point is that they are not very pythonic imho, i.e. they don't really show what the advantage of Python is for GUIs over those other languages. And imho these GUI builders, just like the frameworks that they generate code for are not very suitable for someone who's not a software developer by profession. Because they require way too much glue code. And unfortunately the origin of this problem seems to be the open-source development model itself: Since developers of open source development tools (GUI frameworks, GUI builders etc.) usually implement these for their own use, and since these people are typically software developers by profession who come from a C++-dominated background, they don't see the necessity and they don't have any motivation to implement anything that would help all those potential Python users out there who just can't devote the time and effort required to get over that pretty huge step in the learning curve of those frameworks and tools. Please note that this is not meant as criticism to open-source developers, but as a hint that there might be a business opportunity for someone here to develop and sell something for money. ;-) Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Tkinter is imho honestly the very best argument if you want to make potential new users turn their backs away from Python for good. Just show them one GUI implemented with it and, hey, wait, where are you running to... Yes, Tkinter GUI's are very ugly. http://www.codebykevin.com/phynchronicity-running.png http://www.codebykevin.com/quickwho-main.png OK, so after what - one and a half decades? - Tkinter now finally has caught up with wxPython and PyQt (concerning the look). Which can be used in an as interactive way from the commandline interpreter as Tkinter. Argument against Tkinter withdrawn from my side. But there's afaik still no interactive GUI builder out there for any of these frameworks, nor a higher level framework that requires less glue code between bare naked event handling and the domain-specific code. Event handling - that term already raises my hair because it stinks like bulkloads of clumsy, error-prone diligence work that has nothing to do with the problem I need to get solved. Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
No matter how cool it may seem to create simple GUIs manually or to write business letters using LaTeX: just try to persuade people to move from Word to LaTeX for business letters... Good example. I have done nearly exactly this* - but it was only possible thanks to LyX. Sincerely, Wolfgang *I moved not from Wugh, but from other software to LyX/LaTeX for all my document processing. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
I think this is the wave of the furture for deploying simple programs to many users. It is almost 100% cross platform (can be used on desktop, smartphone, tablet, windows, linux, mac etc) and is very easy to do, even for casual non-programmers who do a little programming (such as many engineers). I think efforts to make a better, and more definitive, GUI builder for Python should focus on makigng an easy to use IDE for creating these kinds of Python-HTMl-Javascript front ends for applications. *That* would really help Python's popularity to take off and expode. Ron Stephens Replying to myself, to add this note: I just read the link likehacker.com/learn-to-code/ about Google's Blockly a drag and drop tool for building apps that outputs Python or Javascript code (among others) and it might be usable along these lines...I'm sure serious programmers would not use it but maybe engineers looking to make web front ends for data acquisition or data base apps might use it... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 11, 6:55 pm, Dietmar Schwertberger n...@schwertberger.de wrote: But then we're back to the initial point: As long as there's no GUI builder for Python, most people will stick to Excel / VBA / VB. Then good thing there *are* GUI builder/IDEs for Python, one of which was good enough for me to take me from essentially zero modern programming experience to a sizable ( ~15k LOC) application. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 10, 12:37 pm, Dietmar Schwertberger maill...@schwertberger.de wrote: Personally, I prefer Python with console, wx or Qt for local applications and Python/HTTP/HTML/Javascript for multi-user database applications. Regards, Dietmar +1 I think this is the wave of the furture for deploying simple programs to many users. It is almost 100% cross platform (can be used on desktop, smartphone, tablet, windows, linux, mac etc) and is very easy to do, even for casual non-programmers who do a little programming (such as many engineers). I think efforts to make a better, and more definitive, GUI builder for Python should focus on makigng an easy to use IDE for creating these kinds of Python-HTMl-Javascript front ends for applications. *That* would really help Python's popularity to take off and expode. Ron Stephens -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
What GUI designer would come the closest to the way that Cocoa's Interface Builder works? I.e. is there any one (cross-platform) that allows to actually connect the GUI created directly to the code and make it available live in an IDE? This whole cycle of design GUI-generate code-add own code to generated code-run application with GUI has always seemed very un-pythonic to me. A dynamic, interpreted language should allow to work in a more lively, direct way to build a GUI. I'm curious about your point but I don't really understand it. Could you try again without using any scare-quoted words? myidea.explanation.retry() Python has this insanely great thing that e.g. Delphi, Java, C#, Visual Basic, etc. lack and that's called an interactive commandline interpreter, which allows you to build GUIs while exploring/trying out the API of a GUI framework step by step. You simply type the code for the GUI at the python prompt and your GUI comes directly to life. Here's an example by someone else: http://pysnippet.blogspot.de/2010/11/getting-interactive-with-pyqt.html Now just (sorry for those quotes again) imagine a GUI builder that generates _and_ _runs_ the code (pyqt, wxpython, pygtk, whatever) for the GUI you edit _while_ you do so. And now imagine that this GUI builder would be integrated with the IDE you use (I use one), so that the GUI code is run in the same interpreter instance as the other code of your application. So that you can directly interact with your application through the GUI you build while you do so. The advantage of using a GUI builder over typing the code into the interpreter window would be that users who rarely implement a GUI(*) would not need to re-dig into the details of the API every time. This is especially tedious since those APIs are essentially C++ APIs wrapped in Python and thus they are honestly simply §$%@# to use for a certain type of Python user(*). And the lack of Python-specific documentation, tutorials etc. doesn't really help. Did I mention yet that just having to read C++ example code in documentation makes me spill my last meal over keyboard, screen etc.? Of course there's PyGUI, but that's unfortunately far from being as complete as PyQt or wxPython and unless someone creates something like an equivalent of Apache Software Foundation for Python, declares PyGUI as the canonical Python GUI framework and funds the work needed to complete it... And then you still need a GUI builder for it. *sigh* Maybe given an example of creating a small text editor application with a GUI builder/ IDE in this Pythonic way you are hoping for. I'm not into text editors as example applications since I don't develop text editors, I rarely even use one. And besides, I don't think any typical user(*) of such a GUI builder would ever implement a text editor in his whole life. Personally, my typical use of such a GUI builder would be for database applications. Which make up, according to my experience, for at least 90% of all custom-built applications in companies. Today, these applications have to be made by external, paid developers who have typically no clue of the application domain in question. Consequently, the applications, no matter how many pages of detailed specifications you as the domain expert write, never do what you wanted them to do. Although just writing the specification takes more time than it would take to implement it myself if only the (GUI) tools and (GUI) frameworks(**) for Python would be at the level required to make them useful for such developers as me(*). And did I mention that the cost of external developers (plus the overhead cost for interaction with them) makes them prohibitive anyway? And did I mention that the time required such external development (plus the overhead time for interaction with the external developers) takes doesn't help either? * Such as casual Python scripting dilettants who are not full-time software developers but domain experts who just use Python to help get their main work done. ** In my case of database applications, something like this: http://www.nakedobjects.org/book/ http://www.nakedobjects.org/downloads/Pawson%20thesis.pdf Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
What GUI designer would come the closest to the way that Cocoa's Interface Builder works? I.e. is there any one (cross-platform) that allows to actually connect the GUI created directly to the code and make it available live in an IDE? If you're developing on the Mac, PyObjC allows you to use Interface Builder for developing Python apps. I know that. And no, I haven't used Interface Builder yet myself, just because I would need those GUIs also to run elsewhere than on my private Mac. However, there are those of us who are deeply uncomfortable with IB and related tools, such as RealBasic and LiveCode/Runtime Revolution. I haven't used any of these either, just because I don't like those languages. Their syntax is ugly, static type declarations are imho perfectly redundant for interpreted languages and besides they don't offer me an interactive interpreter, which is an absolute must-have for my day-to-day use of Python - office automation, ad-hoc information logistics etc. (errr, sorry for those quotation marks again... ;-). These tools make code organization very hard by reducing the amount of code written to the point of the UI working by magic, Any modern GUI framework has quite a lot of magic going on behind the curtains without that the user needs to know or understand how it works. And this is the way it _should_ be. As long as it is well documented how to use that magic. The current GUI frameworks which are available for Python require way too much glue code that needs to be written by hand, imho simply because they are primitive wrappers around frameworks for C++ developers who are used to such bulkloads of slave labour. Python as a language is way ahead of C++, Java, C# etc. in terms of functionality that you can implement per coding effort required , but it simply lacks GUI frameworks and corresponding development tools that are equally efficient. and/or by breaking up your code into little snippets that you can only view by clicking on the widget in the UI tool. I remember reading about RAD IDEs/frameworks out there that managed to integrate/seperate their generated code with/from user-written code quite well. And which could even use external revision control systems etc.. Back in the good old days of software diversity, before MS/Java took over the whole world... A related issue is that using a tool such as this makes you heavily dependent on that particular tool, and subject to its developers' priorities, release schedule, and bugs. This is true with _any_ language, library, framework or software. Heck, it's even true with hardware! If this was such a show-stopper, we would still write computer programs like this: 0100011100101010101 Well, certainly not me, in that case. The pace of Xcode development--with Apple making frequent changes to project formats in a backwards-incompatible way--is an example of this. Wxwidgets/python has a reputation for frequent incompatible API changes, too... And Apple's product politics, oh, well, errr, uhm, don't get me into that... *sigh*. If only all those third-party applications for MacOS X were available on Linux, I would happily forget about Apple's very existence. One reason I prefer to code UI's by hand is because a) in Tkinter it's very easy to do, Tkinter is imho honestly the very best argument if you want to make potential new users turn their backs away from Python for good. Just show them one GUI implemented with it and, hey, wait, where are you running to... I think these issues are a reason that the slick drag-and-drop UI builders tend to be developed by commercial software shops to support their language and/or IDE, but find little traction among open-source developers and languages. The point is that loads of potential developers(*) simply don't ever get to use Python due to the very lack of such tools (and corresponding frameworks). * Domain experts in fact who would need to implement loads of software to help them get their work done but can't. And since there's no budget for external developers, nothing get's ever done about this. Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On 6/11/12 8:01 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote: Tkinter is imho honestly the very best argument if you want to make potential new users turn their backs away from Python for good. Just show them one GUI implemented with it and, hey, wait, where are you running to... Yes, Tkinter GUI's are very ugly. http://www.codebykevin.com/phynchronicity-running.png http://www.codebykevin.com/quickwho-main.png -- Kevin Walzer Code by Kevin http://www.codebykevin.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On 11/06/2012 13:47, Kevin Walzer wrote: Yes, Tkinter GUI's are very ugly. http://www.codebykevin.com/phynchronicity-running.png http://www.codebykevin.com/quickwho-main.png At last we're getting to the crux of the matter. Provided that the GUI is pretty who cares about picking appropriate algorithms for the code, or a sensible database design or whatever. And heaven forbid that anyone suggest using a command line even if this was the better solution for the problem that the user wants solved. -- Cheers. Mark Lawrence. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Wolfgang Keller felip...@gmx.net writes: This whole cycle of design GUI-generate code-add own code to generated code-run application with GUI has always seemed very un-pythonic to me. A dynamic, interpreted language should allow to work in a more lively, direct way to build a GUI. What about Qt Quick? I have used it very little, but it does allow dynamic modification of the GUI elements so that the application changes on the fly. I don't know how pythonic it is, since the GUI is described in QML, which combines CSS and javascript. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 11.06.2012 06:05, schrieb rusi: If python is really a language maven's language then it does not do very well: - its not as object-oriented as Ruby (or other arcana like Eiffel) - its not as functional as Haskell - its not as integrable as Lua - its not as close-to-bare-metal as C - etc Depends on the definition. Maybe, that Python is not a perfect language from an academic point of view, but it's a good choice for anyone looking for a pragmatic programming language. Then why is it up-there among our most popular languages? Because of the 'batteries included.' It's not only the batteries, but also the language itself. As someone wrote a long time ago Python fits my brain. And not having a good gui-builder is a battery (cell?) that is lacking. It's a cell that would make it much easier to compete with other languages/environments. These environments need not necessarily be classical programming language, but could also be Labview, Matlab etc. And regarding popularity, I see very much potential. I have been working for two high-tech companies and I have never met anyone else using Python there. Focus is not classical databases, but data acquisition and processing. Many are still using VB, some are even using HT/HP-BASIC. Quite a lot moved to Labview, some are using Matlab or thinking about moving to it. The ones who actually see the point the advantages of a general purpose language moved to C#. (Nobody is using Java in this context as it obviously would not make any sense.) Anyway, I don't see how people could be persuaded to use a console-only environment, which - realistically - Python is at the moment for most people. From what I see, Python is recognized as a language for scripting and maybe for web servers, but not as a general purpose language to implement GUI software. (To make it clear: I have been using Python as a general purpose language for many years.) Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 11.06.2012 14:01, schrieb Wolfgang Keller: * Domain experts in fact who would need to implement loads of software to help them get their work done but can't. And since there's no budget for external developers, nothing get's ever done about this. Well, typically or at least very often sooner or later something gets done about this as someone finds out that all could be solved using MS Excel and some macros / VBA programming. I would prefer people to invest the same time into a Python based solution. But then we're back to the initial point: As long as there's no GUI builder for Python, most people will stick to Excel / VBA / VB. Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 11.06.2012 16:14, schrieb Anssi Saari: Wolfgang Kellerfelip...@gmx.net writes: This whole cycle of design GUI-generate code-add own code to generated code-run application with GUI has always seemed very un-pythonic to me. A dynamic, interpreted language should allow to work in a more lively, direct way to build a GUI. What about Qt Quick? I have used it very little, but it does allow dynamic modification of the GUI elements so that the application changes on the fly. I don't know how pythonic it is, since the GUI is described in QML, which combines CSS and javascript. I have been following the Qt development as I have been using PySide for some small projects on the Maemo platform. Qt Quick / QML seems to enable the implementation of so-called modern UIs. It's more for people who think that HTML5/CSS/Javascript is the future for UIs. Well, maybe they are right for certain advanced requirements. But for the beginner I don't see how it would help as it's even more difficult to link the GUI to the backend code and also I don't see how having to deal with multiple environments would make things easier. I think that for beginners some basic controls are fine enough and there's no need to care for fancy effects for the most non-consumer applications. For getting an impression about Qt Quick, have a look at http://qt.nokia.com/qtquick/ (The slide show 1,2,3,...) Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 11.06.2012 16:09, schrieb Mark Roseman: On the Tkinter front, I just want to reiterate two important points that are not nearly as well known as they should be. First, it is possible and in fact easy to do decent looking GUI's in Tkinter, with the caveat that you do in fact have to do things very slightly differently than you would have 15 years ago. Shocking, I know. Yes, but when I have the choice between Tkinter, Qt and wx, I still would go for wx or Qt (or stick to wx which I chose 12 years ago). I don't see the point of chosing Tkinter over the other toolkits. Second, there does exist at least one fairly good source of documentation for new users wishing to do exactly this (according to many, many comments I have received), though that documentation is admittedly buried in a sea of out-of-date information that is still all too easy to find. Please see http://www.tkdocs.com and in particular the tutorial there. The point of this thread is that Python is not attractive to casual users who want to implement some GUI programs. I don't see how that would change without an easy-to-use GUI builder, no matter how good the documentation is. Of course, it's possible to split up the documentation into many small building blocks which the user could copy paste together. But then we have a poor-man's GUI builder. I doubt that it would attract new users. (For more straightforward tasks like hardware control / data acquisition I made good experiences with a Wiki-based approach of providing snippets. But *simple* GUIs are mainly visual and there should be a way to create them visually without consulting much documentation.) Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 11.06.2012 01:15, schrieb Chris Angelico: If you're a complete non-programmer, then of course that's an opaque block of text. But to a programmer, it ought to be fairly readable - Well, I can read the code. But still I would not be able (or interested) to write C++/GTK code. With my rusty C++ knowledge and a simple GUI builder, I might be able to create the GUI, though. Whether I could then connect the events to actions is a different question and depends on the GUI builder. If it does not support this, then I would just not write the software. That's the starting point of this thread: for Python we could not identify such a GUI editor. it says what it does. I'm confident that anyone who's built a GUI should be able to figure out what that's going to create, even if you've never used GTK before. (And yes, it's not Python. Sorry. I don't have a Python example handy.) All the discussion about casual users being able to implement GUIs by manually coding it is somehow based on the assumption that suitable examples for any purpose are available. So to me the above example seems to be the proof that suitable examples are not available easily. Modern UI toolkits are generally not that difficult to use. Add just a few convenience functions (you'll see a call to a button function in the above code - it creates a GTK2.Button, sets it up, and returns it), and make a nice, well-commented configuration file that just happens to be executed as Python, and you've made it pretty possible for a non-programmer to knock together a GUI. They'll have learned to write code without, perhaps, even realizing it. Right, they are not too difficult to use for full-time programmers or for people who want to invest a lot of time (as hobbyist). But there are many people who just need to get things done and who don't want to invest too many time on a simple GUI. No matter how cool it may seem to create simple GUIs manually or to write business letters using LaTeX: just try to persuade people to move from Word to LaTeX for business letters... Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 10, 11:05 pm, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: If python is really a language maven's language then it does not do very well: - its not as object-oriented as Ruby (or other arcana like Eiffel) if it were object-oreiented as Ruby, then why not use Ruby? - its not as functional as Haskell if it were as functional as Haskell, then why not use Haskell? - its not as integrable as Lua if it were as integrable as Lua, then why not use Lua? - its not as close-to-bare-metal as C if it were as asinine as C, then why not use C? - etc exactly! Then why is it up-there among our most popular languages? Because of the 'batteries included.' No. It's up there because it does not FORCE you to program in a single paradigm. Look. I love OOP. It works well for so many problems -- but not for ALL problems! I like the freedom i have when using Python. I don't get that feeling anywhere else. And not having a good gui-builder is a battery (cell?) that is lacking. Nonsense. I'm not saying we should NEVER have a visual gui builder, no, but i am saying that we don't need one to be a great language. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 11, 9:09 am, Mark Roseman m...@markroseman.com wrote: Second, there does exist at least one fairly good source of documentation for new users wishing to do exactly this (according to many, many comments I have received), though that documentation is admittedly buried in a sea of out-of-date information that is still all too easy to find. Well you Mark you have really hit it this time. * Outdated tuts are contributing to the slow adoption of Python3000 * Outdated tuts are contributing the animosity towards Tkinter. * Poorly written tuts are doing even more damage. I have pointed this out before with very little feedback from our community members. So you know what i did... about two years ago i start a quest to rid the WWW of old and outdated tutorials. I send out email after email; begging; pleading, and yes even brown-nosing!... and you know how many reposes i got? Three! Yes three! And one of the three told me to eef-off. The other two chaps not only updated their tutorials, they even sent me a nice Thank you letter. Oh. And the one who told me to eff-off, he re-read my email and decided he took it out of context and then he updated his tut also. You see. If I, or me rather, the despised and hated rantingrick can inspire three people to contribute positively to this community, well, just imagine what you or *gasps* GvR could do! Is any heavy weight willing to step forward and be heard? What say you? The silence is deafening. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 9, 10:07 pm, Dietmar Schwertberger n...@schwertberger.de wrote: And you can than go in the code editor to that function and change the code to do whatever you want. Having to go there is already more work than I would expect. I would expect to go there e.g. by a double-click. This is just a minor point, but many minor points sum up... If you take maybe 10 people each with some BASIC or Python knowledge, I would bet that you can teach most of them how to write a simple GUI program in VB within five minutes, but you'll probably fail with Boa. (And even then you would have to re-teach them in a few months when they try to write their next program.) This is worth a read in this context: http://osteele.com/archives/2004/11/ides -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On 10 June 2012 07:16, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: This is worth a read in this context: http://osteele.com/archives/2004/11/ides Interesting! I definitely fall nicely at one extreme of this dichotomy. Every time I've tried to use an IDE, it's made me feel inadequate and I've quickly retreated to my comfort zone (emacs + xterm). I felt inadequate because I felt like the IDE was hindering me rather than helping me. All I ask from the program that I use to write code is: * syntax highlighting * sensible auto-indenting * as little reliance on the mouse as possible * emacs key bindings :) This article makes me feel more positive about my inability to feel comfortable in an IDE. Thanks for the link! -- Arnaud -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 10.06.2012 08:16, schrieb rusi: This is worth a read in this context: http://osteele.com/archives/2004/11/ides So which language would you suggest to use next? ;-) I've read the article. It presents some nice ideas, but probably the author has not used Python before. Otherwise he would have noticed that the overall productivity does not only depend on language and IDE/editor, but on the complete environment which in the case of Python includes the ability to use the interpreter interactively. For many tasks that's a major productivity boost. But that's a point that many people don't see because their current language like C# or Java does not have an interpreter and when they just look at the syntax, the find there's not enough improvement to switch. Also, I'm not sure whether the author counts the libraries as language or tool feature. In my opinion the environment and the libraries should be listed on their own in such an article. Libraries are developed after the language, but usually they are ahead of the other tools/IDEs. The author lists many IDE features that I personally don't find too important (the refactoring capabilities of a simple text editor are fine for me...). But following the link to Laszlo made the reason quite clear because his IDE background is from Eclipse not from Python. Btw.: I've been using Python for 16 or 17 years now. Only 3 years ago I did the switch from Editor to IDE (Wing IDE) and this has brought a *significant* boost of productivity (especially the good debugger allows you to code in a different way as you can use the interactive interpreter at any point in your program). But back to my original point, this time in the context of the article: If you want to 'sell' a programming language for corporate use, you absolutely need the tools. And this includes an easy-to-use GUI editor which does not only allow to create the GUI, but also to fill it with code. Most corporate users are casual users, not full time programmers. Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On 6/8/12 8:27 AM, Wolfgang Keller wrote: What GUI designer would come the closest to the way that Cocoa's Interface Builder works? I.e. is there any one (cross-platform) that allows to actually connect the GUI created directly to the code and make it available live in an IDE? If you're developing on the Mac, PyObjC allows you to use Interface Builder for developing Python apps. However, there are those of us who are deeply uncomfortable with IB and related tools, such as RealBasic and LiveCode/Runtime Revolution. These tools make code organization very hard by reducing the amount of code written to the point of the UI working by magic, and/or by breaking up your code into little snippets that you can only view by clicking on the widget in the UI tool. A related issue is that using a tool such as this makes you heavily dependent on that particular tool, and subject to its developers' priorities, release schedule, and bugs. The pace of Xcode development--with Apple making frequent changes to project formats in a backwards-incompatible way--is an example of this. One reason I prefer to code UI's by hand is because a) in Tkinter it's very easy to do, and b) it allows me to have a much better mental model of my code and my app's functionality--I can put everything into as many .py files as I need to, and can edit my code with any text editor. I think these issues are a reason that the slick drag-and-drop UI builders tend to be developed by commercial software shops to support their language and/or IDE, but find little traction among open-source developers and languages. --Kevin -- Kevin Walzer Code by Kevin http://www.codebykevin.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 8, 7:27 am, Wolfgang Keller felip...@gmx.net wrote: This whole cycle of design GUI-generate code-add own code to generated code-run application with GUI has always seemed very un-pythonic to me. A dynamic, interpreted language should allow to work in a more lively, direct way to build a GUI. I strongly agree with this statement also. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 9, 8:25 am, Dietmar Schwertberger n...@schwertberger.de
wrote:
Before anyone now writes Good GUIs are coded by hand:
I agree, but for many purposes only simple GUIs are required
and it should be possible to create these without studying manuals
(on toolkit and GUI editor).
It is possible. Try Tkinter for the get-you-from-a-to-b solution,
or, wxPython if you like fog lamps, heated seats, and navigation
systems.
A typical simple GUI would e.g. be for a measurement / data aquisition
program, where you just need some buttons and fields.
Buttons and feilds are just a few short lines of code. Look. You guys
don't need a visual GUI builder. What you need to do is stop being
lazy and spend a few hours studing the basics of Tkinter and wxPyhon
(or whatever else suits your needs). IMO, every single python
programmer who needs GUI interfaces should know the basics of AT LEAST
Tkinter without even looking at the docs. I mean, how difficult is:
import Tkinter as tk
from Tkconstants import *
root = tk.Tk()
root.title('Noob')
for x in range(10):
f = tk.Frame(root)
f.pack(fill=X, expand=YES)
l = tk.Label(f, text=Field_+str(x))
l.pack(side=LEFT, anchor=W)
e = tk.Entry(f)
e.pack(side=LEFT, fill=X, expand=YES)
root.mainloop()
#
# Or even better. Use grid!
#
root = tk.Tk()
root.title('Amatuer')
root.columnconfigure(1, weight=1)
for x in range(10):
l = tk.Label(root, text=Field_+str(x))
l.grid(row=x, column=0, sticky=W)
e = tk.Entry(root)
e.grid(row=x, column=1, sticky=W+E)
root.mainloop()
#
# Or become a pro and create reusable objects!
#
class LE(tk.Frame):
def __init__(self, master, **kw):
tk.Frame.__init__(self, master)
self.l = tk.Label(self, **kw)
self.l.pack(side=LEFT)
self.e = tk.Entry(self)
self.e.pack(side=LEFT, fill=X, expand=YES)
root = tk.Tk()
root.title('Pro')
for x in range(10):
le = LE(root, text=Field_+str(x))
le.pack(fill=X, expand=YES)
root.mainloop()
I think that something in the style of Visual BASIC (version 6) is required
for either wxPython or PyQt/PySide (or both).
In the Visual BASIC editor you can e.g. add a GUI element
and directly go to the code editor to fill methods (e.g. an OnClick
method).
With Tkinter you add a GUI element IN THE CODE and then you are
ALREADY in the code editor! What an amazing concept! No juggling
editors and windows. No need to mentally switch from one language to
another. Can you imagine how productive you could be?
If you have not used VB before, you should just try it. You can create
GUIs within a few minutes even if you haven't used it before.
Allow me to qualify that very naive generalization: ANYBODY and point
and click, very few can actually write code.
(Sure, the fact that anyone can use it has the side effect that most
of these GUIs are not good...)
Well i see that you agree. Look. This is fact. GUI's require you to
write code. You cannot get around this fact. Sure, you can create some
templates. But in the end, you will have to write in order to link the
templates together.
I say. If your GUI kit gives you the feeling that you are writing too
much boilerplate, well, then, it's time to wrap up some re-usable
functionality on your own. I have done this myself with Tkinter AND Wx.
( although much more so with Tkinter being that is a poorly designed
GUI)
Also:
Such an editor should support simple manual layouts without enforcing
the use of sizers (wx) or layout managers (Qt).
These add an additional level of complexity which is not required
for simple GUIs.
See above code for example of *gasps* simple layouts in REAL code!
Background:
I'm using Python in a corporate environment but I'm more or less
the only one using it. I could propagate Python for wider use as it
is the best available language for things like hardware control and
data acquisition, but the lack of an easy-to-use GUI editor is
the blocking point.
BS!
I can teach anyone how to create a program for data
acquisition, but I don't see how more than a few could create a GUI
without an easy-to-use tool.
Like Tkinter?
There's still a lot of VB6 code around as there's no replacement and
this gap could well be filled by Python.
Visual Basic sucks. I spend more time re-focusing my mental energy
than actually getting work done. There is no replacement for pure raw
code. You visualize GUI's in you mind, and fingers bring that vision
to life through properly written API's.
Never invent a new problem for a solution that does not exist.
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
(Sorry for posting without references to the previous messages, but it seems that many messages don't get through to the nntp server that I'm using.) Chris Angelico wrote (in two posts): There was a time when that was a highly advertisable feature - build XYZ applications without writing a single line of code!. I've seen it in database front-end builders as well as GUI tools, same thing. But those sorts of tools tend not to be what experts want to use. You end up having to un-learn the easy way before you learn the hard way that lets you do everything. This time is not over. Especially when you look at data acquisition and control applications where tools like Labview are widely used. Personally, I would not want to use such tools as I find it quite complicated to implement any logic with a graphical editor. But when you want to sell an alternative to such tools, then you should not offer a tool which makes it almost impossible for a typical engineer to create a simple GUI. You refer to non-programmers and then point out that they would be lost trying to add code. That's a natural consequence of not being a programmer, Sure, but with non-programmers I'm referring to typical engineers who can implement some basic programs for measurement, control or data processing. and of all languages to help someone bridge that gap and start coding, I would say Python is, if not the absolute best, certainly up there somewhere. Just as you wouldn't expect a music 100% agreed. It's the only programming language that I can recommend to casual or even non-programmers, but only as long as he/she's not interested in GUI programming. authoring program to let someone publish score without knowing how to compose music, you can't expect a GUI tool to relieve you of the need to write code. The audience of GUI editors is not the artist / professional... WYSIWYG UI designers suffer badly from a need to guess _why_ the human did what s/he did. Build your UI manually, and there's no guesswork - you explicitly _tell_ the computer what to do and why. True for non-trivial applications. I don't have many windows and dialogs that could have been created using a GUI editor in my main wxPython based application. But even then: I've learned wxPython from looking at the code that wxDesigner created. Of course, that was in 1999/2000 when no books on such matters were available. There's an assumption in most of the Windows world that everything needs a GUI. For a simple data acquisition program, I wouldn't use one - I'd have it run in a console. That's something that any programmer should be able to create without studying complex manuals; all you need to know is the basics of I/O and possibly argument parsing. Yes, usually I'm using a console as most measurement programs are quite straighforward and linear. But I don't see a way to convince people to go back to the console. They will always want to implement a basic GUI for one or the other program and then they will end up frustrated... (Or I have to implement the GUI for them, which is not an option.) I've used Visual Basic. My first salaried work was on VB. Making it easy to throw together a simple GUI doesn't mean a thing when you have a large project to write - your business logic and UI design work will I would never consider or recommend to write anything significant using a GUI builder. Also, I would never recommend anyone to use VB at all. But given the lack of alternatives, it still has a significant market share. (The fact that anyone can hack together a program in VB has the side- effect that most programs are not very good...) massively dwarf the effort of actually throwing widgets into a hierarchy. So the only time it's going to be an issue is with trivial programs; which means there isn't much to be saved. Just make your trivial things run in a console, and then either use a GUI builder (several have been mentioned) or hand-write your UI code. Right, we're talking about non-trivial programs with almost trivial user interfaces. But I don't see a Python GUI builder which a casual user could use to add a GUI to the code. (To be exact: it's easy to create a GUI with one or the other builder, but non-trivial to connect it to the backend.) Actually, there's a third option these days. Give it no console and no GUI, make it respond to HTTP connections, and use a web browser as your UI. :) I don't think that this is easier for the casual user as multiple languages and environments are involved. But on the other hand there are some (mainly commercial) organizations who believe that HTML5, CSS and Javascript are the future for GUI programming. Personally, I prefer Python with console, wx or Qt for local applications and Python/HTTP/HTML/Javascript for multi-user database applications. Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 10.06.2012 21:36, schrieb Rick Johnson: It is possible. Try Tkinter for the get-you-from-a-to-b solution, or, wxPython if you like fog lamps, heated seats, and navigation systems. I prefer wx or Qt. The look and feel is one reason. But the fact that Tkinter is still the standard GUI toolkit tells a lot about the situation... Buttons and feilds are just a few short lines of code. Look. You guys don't need a visual GUI builder. What you need to do is stop being lazy and spend a few hours studing the basics of Tkinter and wxPyhon (or whatever else suits your needs). IMO, every single python programmer who needs GUI interfaces should know the basics of AT LEAST Tkinter without even looking at the docs. I mean, how difficult is: [snipped code examples] Sure, I know how to code GUIs. But the learning curve is too steep for new users wanting to implement simple GUIs. With Tkinter you add a GUI element IN THE CODE and then you are ALREADY in the code editor! What an amazing concept! No juggling editors and windows. No need to mentally switch from one language to another. Can you imagine how productive you could be? I thought about preparing some templates for typcial applications, but I abandonded this as I don't think that it would work out well. If you have not used VB before, you should just try it. You can create GUIs within a few minutes even if you haven't used it before. Allow me to qualify that very naive generalization: ANYBODY and point and click, very few can actually write code. Right. I won't comment on the quality of the most VB code. But there are many applications where the quality of the code is not the main objective. It just needs to work e.g. to set up the instrument and read back data. The know-how and value is not the GUI code, but in the instrument setup and data evaluation. I say. If your GUI kit gives you the feeling that you are writing too much boilerplate, well, then, it's time to wrap up some re-usable functionality on your own. I have done this myself with Tkinter AND Wx. ( although much more so with Tkinter being that is a poorly designed GUI) Did the same for wx twelve years ago as I did not like e.g. the event handling. Most of the time I'm still using my own wrappers. Still, once or twice a year I'm writing some small applications where I would use a GUI builder if it was available instead of copying old code as template. I can teach anyone how to create a program for data acquisition, but I don't see how more than a few could create a GUI without an easy-to-use tool. Like Tkinter? Don't like Tkinter, even though the alternatives are not too Pythonic either. Visual Basic sucks. I spend more time re-focusing my mental energy than actually getting work done. There is no replacement for pure raw code. You visualize GUI's in you mind, and fingers bring that vision to life through properly written API's. Never invent a new problem for a solution that does not exist. Sure, VB language sucks, but still I do not see any other tool that would cover the RAD aspect of the VB 6 environment. I would love to see Python for this, even though this would have negative side effects (e.g. attracting stupid people like PHP seems to). Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 10, 2:36 pm, Rick Johnson rantingrickjohn...@gmail.com wrote:
#
# Or become a pro and create reusable objects!
#
class LE(tk.Frame):
def __init__(self, master, **kw):
tk.Frame.__init__(self, master)
self.l = tk.Label(self, **kw)
self.l.pack(side=LEFT)
self.e = tk.Entry(self)
self.e.pack(side=LEFT, fill=X, expand=YES)
root = tk.Tk()
root.title('Pro')
for x in range(10):
le = LE(root, text=Field_+str(x))
le.pack(fill=X, expand=YES)
root.mainloop()
PS: The keywords argument should have been passed to the entry widget
and NOT the label. Yes, occasionally, even pros make subtle mistakes.
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 5:37 AM, Dietmar Schwertberger maill...@schwertberger.de wrote: Chris Angelico wrote (in two posts): There was a time when that was a highly advertisable feature - build XYZ applications without writing a single line of code!. I've seen it in database front-end builders as well as GUI tools, same thing. But those sorts of tools tend not to be what experts want to use. You end up having to un-learn the easy way before you learn the hard way that lets you do everything. This time is not over. Especially when you look at data acquisition and control applications where tools like Labview are widely used. Personally, I would not want to use such tools as I find it quite complicated to implement any logic with a graphical editor. But when you want to sell an alternative to such tools, then you should not offer a tool which makes it almost impossible for a typical engineer to create a simple GUI. [chomp lots of other examples - go read 'em in the original post :) ] Either these people know how to write code, or they don't. If they do, then building a simple GUI shouldn't be beyond them; if they don't know that much code, then anything more than trivial _will_ be beyond them. Here's the window building code from something I just knocked together, with all comments stripped out: object mainwindow=GTK2.Window(GTK2.WindowToplevel); mainwindow-set_title(Timing)-set_default_size(400,300)-signal_connect(destroy,window_destroy); GTK2.HbuttonBox btns=GTK2.HbuttonBox()-set_layout(GTK2.BUTTONBOX_SPREAD); foreach (labels,string lbl) btns-add(buttons[lbl]=button(lbl,mode_change)); mainwindow-add(GTK2.Vbox(0,0) -add(GTK2.TextView(buffer=GTK2.TextBuffer())-set_size_request(0,0)) -pack_start(btns,0,0,0))-show_all(); If you're a complete non-programmer, then of course that's an opaque block of text. But to a programmer, it ought to be fairly readable - it says what it does. I'm confident that anyone who's built a GUI should be able to figure out what that's going to create, even if you've never used GTK before. (And yes, it's not Python. Sorry. I don't have a Python example handy.) Modern UI toolkits are generally not that difficult to use. Add just a few convenience functions (you'll see a call to a button function in the above code - it creates a GTK2.Button, sets it up, and returns it), and make a nice, well-commented configuration file that just happens to be executed as Python, and you've made it pretty possible for a non-programmer to knock together a GUI. They'll have learned to write code without, perhaps, even realizing it. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 10, 4:52 pm, Dietmar Schwertberger n...@schwertberger.de wrote: Am 10.06.2012 08:16, schrieb rusi: This is worth a read in this context:http://osteele.com/archives/2004/11/ides I've read the article. It presents some nice ideas, but probably the author has not used Python before. Otherwise he would have noticed that the overall productivity does not only depend on language and IDE/editor, but on the complete environment which in the case of Python includes the ability to use the interpreter interactively. For many tasks that's a major productivity boost. But that's a point that many people don't see because their current language like C# or Java does not have an interpreter and when they just look at the syntax, the find there's not enough improvement to switch. Full agreement here Also, I'm not sure whether the author counts the libraries as language or tool feature. In my opinion the environment and the libraries should be listed on their own in such an article. Libraries are developed after the language, but usually they are ahead of the other tools/IDEs. That was my main point and the reason for referring to that article. If I may rephrase your points in OSteele's terminology: If python is really a language maven's language then it does not do very well: - its not as object-oriented as Ruby (or other arcana like Eiffel) - its not as functional as Haskell - its not as integrable as Lua - its not as close-to-bare-metal as C - etc Then why is it up-there among our most popular languages? Because of the 'batteries included.' And not having a good gui-builder is a battery (cell?) that is lacking. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 08.06.2012 17:11, schrieb CM: I'm curious about your point but I don't really understand it. Could you try again without using any scare-quoted words? Maybe given an example of creating a small text editor application with a GUI builder/ IDE in this Pythonic way you are hoping for. Before anyone now writes Good GUIs are coded by hand: I agree, but for many purposes only simple GUIs are required and it should be possible to create these without studying manuals (on toolkit and GUI editor). A typical simple GUI would e.g. be for a measurement / data aquisition program, where you just need some buttons and fields. I think that something in the style of Visual BASIC (version 6) is required for either wxPython or PyQt/PySide (or both). In the Visual BASIC editor you can e.g. add a GUI element and directly go to the code editor to fill methods (e.g. an OnClick method). If you have not used VB before, you should just try it. You can create GUIs within a few minutes even if you haven't used it before. (Sure, the fact that anyone can use it has the side effect that most of these GUIs are not good...) Also: Such an editor should support simple manual layouts without enforcing the use of sizers (wx) or layout managers (Qt). These add an additional level of complexity which is not required for simple GUIs. Background: I'm using Python in a corporate environment but I'm more or less the only one using it. I could propagate Python for wider use as it is the best available language for things like hardware control and data acquisition, but the lack of an easy-to-use GUI editor is the blocking point. I can teach anyone how to create a program for data acquisition, but I don't see how more than a few could create a GUI without an easy-to-use tool. There's still a lot of VB6 code around as there's no replacement and this gap could well be filled by Python. Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
I think that something in the style of Visual BASIC (version 6) is required for either wxPython or PyQt/PySide (or both). In the Visual BASIC editor you can e.g. add a GUI element and directly go to the code editor to fill methods (e.g. an OnClick method). You can do this for wxPython with Boa Constructor easily. You can bind an event handler for a wx.EVT_BUTTON to, e.g., Button1 with Boa and it will add this code for you to the bottom of your code: def OnButton1Button(self,evt): evt.Skip() And you can than go in the code editor to that function and change the code to do whatever you want. If you have not used VB before, you should just try it. You can create GUIs within a few minutes even if you haven't used it before. Same with Boa. Such an editor should support simple manual layouts without enforcing the use of sizers (wx) or layout managers (Qt). These add an additional level of complexity which is not required for simple GUIs. Same with Boa, though it also has good support for sizers which generally should be required for anything other than the simplest GUIs. data acquisition, but the lack of an easy-to-use GUI editor is the blocking point. I can teach anyone how to create a program for data acquisition, but I don't see how more than a few could create a GUI without an easy-to-use tool. There's still a lot of VB6 code around as there's no replacement and this gap could well be filled by Python. In addition to Boa, I get the sense that the other tools mentioned here are also good, so is this blocking point real? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 11:25 PM, Dietmar Schwertberger n...@schwertberger.de wrote: ... for many purposes only simple GUIs are required and it should be possible to create these without studying manuals (on toolkit and GUI editor). A typical simple GUI would e.g. be for a measurement / data aquisition program, where you just need some buttons and fields. If you have not used VB before, you should just try it. You can create GUIs within a few minutes even if you haven't used it before. (Sure, the fact that anyone can use it has the side effect that most of these GUIs are not good...) There's an assumption in most of the Windows world that everything needs a GUI. For a simple data acquisition program, I wouldn't use one - I'd have it run in a console. That's something that any programmer should be able to create without studying complex manuals; all you need to know is the basics of I/O and possibly argument parsing. I've used Visual Basic. My first salaried work was on VB. Making it easy to throw together a simple GUI doesn't mean a thing when you have a large project to write - your business logic and UI design work will massively dwarf the effort of actually throwing widgets into a hierarchy. So the only time it's going to be an issue is with trivial programs; which means there isn't much to be saved. Just make your trivial things run in a console, and then either use a GUI builder (several have been mentioned) or hand-write your UI code. Actually, there's a third option these days. Give it no console and no GUI, make it respond to HTTP connections, and use a web browser as your UI. :) ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
Am 09.06.2012 17:34, schrieb CM: You can do this for wxPython with Boa Constructor easily. You can bind an event handler for a wx.EVT_BUTTON to, e.g., Button1 with Boa and it will add this code for you to the bottom of your code: def OnButton1Button(self,evt): evt.Skip() And you can than go in the code editor to that function and change the code to do whatever you want. Having to go there is already more work than I would expect. I would expect to go there e.g. by a double-click. This is just a minor point, but many minor points sum up... If you take maybe 10 people each with some BASIC or Python knowledge, I would bet that you can teach most of them how to write a simple GUI program in VB within five minutes, but you'll probably fail with Boa. (And even then you would have to re-teach them in a few months when they try to write their next program.) If you have not used VB before, you should just try it. You can create GUIs within a few minutes even if you haven't used it before. Same with Boa. Not for me when I tried Boa. The logic / usage concept behind is not exactly straightforward. At the time, Boa was suggested to be the perfect choice for previous Delphi users. Maybe my problem was that I did never use Delphi. (Only Turbo Pascal in the pre-gui era...) Such an editor should support simple manual layouts without enforcing the use of sizers (wx) or layout managers (Qt). These add an additional level of complexity which is not required for simple GUIs. Same with Boa, though it also has good support for sizers which generally should be required for anything other than the simplest GUIs. Yes, at least Boa left the choice to the user. Some of the other tools even insist on sizers at places where they are not even required with a sizer-based layout. (E.g. with wx you usually place a notebook directly on a frame while some tools insist on using a sizer first.) In addition to Boa, I get the sense that the other tools mentioned here are also good, so is this blocking point real? I've tried several: wxDesigner, Boa, QtCreator, wxFormBuilder, wxGlade, None of these were such that I could propagate it as GUI development tool for non-programmers / casual users. Sure, some are good for designing the GUI, but at the point where the user code is to be added, most people would be lost. (I think that was the point that Wolfgang did not like and did describe as un-pythonic.) Also, another requirement for this purpose would be that the tool is under active development. This would e.g. rule out Boa. I would not care whether the tool is freeware or commercial. Being freeware would make handling easier, though (e.g. deployment to all measurement PCs by just running it from a file share is easier than local installations and license handling). Regards, Dietmar -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 3:07 AM, Dietmar Schwertberger n...@schwertberger.de wrote: None of these were such that I could propagate it as GUI development tool for non-programmers / casual users. Sure, some are good for designing the GUI, but at the point where the user code is to be added, most people would be lost. There was a time when that was a highly advertisable feature - build XYZ applications without writing a single line of code!. I've seen it in database front-end builders as well as GUI tools, same thing. But those sorts of tools tend not to be what experts want to use. You end up having to un-learn the easy way before you learn the hard way that lets you do everything. You refer to non-programmers and then point out that they would be lost trying to add code. That's a natural consequence of not being a programmer, and of all languages to help someone bridge that gap and start coding, I would say Python is, if not the absolute best, certainly up there somewhere. Just as you wouldn't expect a music authoring program to let someone publish score without knowing how to compose music, you can't expect a GUI tool to relieve you of the need to write code. WYSIWYG UI designers suffer badly from a need to guess _why_ the human did what s/he did. Build your UI manually, and there's no guesswork - you explicitly _tell_ the computer what to do and why. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
I want a gui designer that writes the gui code for me. I don't want to write gui code. what is the gui designer that is most popular? I tried boa-constructor, and it works, but I am concerned about how dated it seems to be with no updates in over six years. Sorry to hijack your thread, but since this is a very related question... What GUI designer would come the closest to the way that Cocoa's Interface Builder works? I.e. is there any one (cross-platform) that allows to actually connect the GUI created directly to the code and make it available live in an IDE? This whole cycle of design GUI-generate code-add own code to generated code-run application with GUI has always seemed very un-pythonic to me. A dynamic, interpreted language should allow to work in a more lively, direct way to build a GUI. TIA, Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pythonic cross-platform GUI desingers à la Interface Builder (Re: what gui designer is everyone using)
On Jun 8, 8:27 am, Wolfgang Keller felip...@gmx.net wrote: I want a gui designer that writes the gui code for me. I don't want to write gui code. what is the gui designer that is most popular? I tried boa-constructor, and it works, but I am concerned about how dated it seems to be with no updates in over six years. Sorry to hijack your thread, but since this is a very related question... What GUI designer would come the closest to the way that Cocoa's Interface Builder works? I.e. is there any one (cross-platform) that allows to actually connect the GUI created directly to the code and make it available live in an IDE? This whole cycle of design GUI-generate code-add own code to generated code-run application with GUI has always seemed very un-pythonic to me. A dynamic, interpreted language should allow to work in a more lively, direct way to build a GUI. TIA, Sincerely, Wolfgang I'm curious about your point but I don't really understand it. Could you try again without using any scare-quoted words? Maybe given an example of creating a small text editor application with a GUI builder/ IDE in this Pythonic way you are hoping for. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
