Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 03/04/2023 02.45, Michael Torrie wrote: On 4/2/23 05:09, Dietmar Schwertberger wrote: I also did evaluate all the GUI builder from time to time between 2000 and 2016 to find one that I could recommend to colleagues, but could not find one. Then I started contributing to wxGlade and I can say that since a few years it's as easy again to build GUIs as it was with VB6. I don't want to go back to coding GUIs manually. For most use cases it's a waste of time and often it does not result in the best GUI as it's not so easy to try out and rearrange elements. But any modern GUI toolkit has sizers and layout managers. If you're manually placing elements you cannot deal with HiDPI or changing window sizes. Rearranging happens automatically when using sizers and layout managers. That said, the future of GUIs is declarative, using XAML or some other domain-specific language like QML. Examples of this include QtQuick (the long-term direction Qt is heading), and the various dot Net GUI toolkits now popular including MS' own MAUI, WPF, Avalonia. GUI designer tools (Qt Creator, Visual Studio) can be used to assist and help layout the skeleton, but ultimately the GUI is defined by code. And it works very well, is adaptive, and can automatically size and rearrange. If you want portability to mobile devices, this is where it's at. I've tried wxGlade but never could get into it, or wxWidgets in general. I used to use GTK a lot and did use Glade back then, and dynamically loaded the UI definition files at run time. Lately used more Qt with QtDesigner, and even extended Designer to support using some custom widgets I made. but the future of Qt is clearly QtQuick, so I've been learning that. Has its warts, but in general I like the declarative paradigm. It's a learning curve. Overall it's fairly powerful, flexible and portable. I have used the designer in Qt Creator a bit, but it's often faster and just as intuitive to write it in QML, since you're going to be dropping into QML frequently anyway to set properties (not unlike having to set widget properties in Qt Designer. So I guess it's 6s using the graphical designer vs straight Qt. Do the two approaches acknowledge each other and enable 'round tripping'? ie to use the best?better tool for particular jobs (and to cope with later-maintenance) can one start using one approach, switch to using the other, and then go back to the first? -- Regards, =dn -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 2023-04-02, Michael Torrie wrote: > On 4/2/23 05:09, Dietmar Schwertberger wrote: >> I also did evaluate all the GUI builder from time to time between >> 2000 and 2016 to find one that I could recommend to colleagues, >> but could not find one. Then I started contributing to wxGlade >> and I can say that since a few years it's as easy again to >> build GUIs as it was with VB6. > > [...] > > But any modern GUI toolkit has sizers and layout managers. If you're > manually placing elements you cannot deal with HiDPI or changing window > sizes. Ah, that's the brilliant thing about VB6 apps! They only work properly on machines with the same resoultion and display/font configuration as the developer. -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
Hi, Dietmer, On Sun, Apr 2, 2023 at 1:14 PM Dietmar Schwertberger wrote: > > On 02.04.2023 18:26, Michael Torrie wrote: > > Been a long time. I was initially turned off by the event handling > > system of wx compared to the signals and slots of Gtk and Qt. > When starting with Python GUIs in 1999, I evaluated both. > Qt event handling had an advantage for C++ where the wxWidgets > people had to use event tables. I don't know when wxWidgets > added dynamic event binding, but with wxPython I don't know > anything else than dynamic binding. I think Bind() was added sometime in 2.9 as GSoC project. And https://docs.wxwidgets.org/latest/classwx_evt_handler.html#a3b4a42f7263fd0a257a996a078ef802f proves me correct: it is in "Since 2.9.0" Thank you. > > > Regards, > > Dietmar > > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 02.04.2023 18:26, Michael Torrie wrote: Been a long time. I was initially turned off by the event handling system of wx compared to the signals and slots of Gtk and Qt. When starting with Python GUIs in 1999, I evaluated both. Qt event handling had an advantage for C++ where the wxWidgets people had to use event tables. I don't know when wxWidgets added dynamic event binding, but with wxPython I don't know anything else than dynamic binding. Regards, Dietmar -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 02.04.2023 18:20, Michael Torrie wrote: Well the thing is you don't need to generate Python code at all. Qt provides a UI loader class that loads the UI file at run time, builds the objects in memory, and connects all your signals for you. I know, but having to load the .ui file is awkward. Even worse, you lose things like code completion. So much nicer than code generation. I absolutely disagree on this. Regards, Dietmar -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 2023-04-02 9:09 a.m., Dietmar Schwertberger wrote: >> I've tried wxGlade but never could get into it, or wxWidgets in general. > > Which version? Up to 0.7.2 I agree. Been a long time. I was initially turned off by the event handling system of wx compared to the signals and slots of Gtk and Qt. > For me QtQuick and QML are a step backwards by some ten years when > it comes to development speed. > It's as much 'fun' as doing GUIs with HTML and JavaScript. > Unfortunately, The Qt Company refused to provide an API for QtQuick to > be able to use it without QML. > Anyway, desktop development has long moved out of their focus > (around 15 years ago when Nokia acquired Trolltech). It's not where > their commercial customers are. There are a number of desktop apps built in QtQuick. KDE is transitioning to QtQuick and it's been alright, not without some consistency issues. The Cura slicer is another example of a complete desktop app written in QtQuick which looks and feels quite nicely on all platforms. For me, more and more I need to be able to run on mobile as well as desktop. Qt, GTK, or wx are just not good fits when you need that kind of portability. But traditional Qt will be with us or decades yet. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 2023-04-02 9:09 a.m., Dietmar Schwertberger wrote: > That's what I hated with Qt Designer: it does not output Python code > but a .ui file. > This was the point where I could not recommend it to anyone. Well the thing is you don't need to generate Python code at all. Qt provides a UI loader class that loads the UI file at run time, builds the objects in memory, and connects all your signals for you. So much nicer than code generation. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 02.04.2023 16:45, Michael Torrie wrote: But any modern GUI toolkit has sizers and layout managers. If you're manually placing elements you cannot deal with HiDPI or changing window sizes. Rearranging happens automatically when using sizers and layout managers. I did not talk about pixel placement with wxGlade. That's not supported. It's of course using sizers and with a hierarchy of sizers it's much easier to rearrange things than it would be with pixel placement. GUI designer tools (Qt Creator, Visual Studio) can be used to assist and help layout the skeleton, but ultimately the GUI is defined by code. And That's what I hated with Qt Designer: it does not output Python code but a .ui file. This was the point where I could not recommend it to anyone. I've tried wxGlade but never could get into it, or wxWidgets in general. Which version? Up to 0.7.2 I agree. but the future of Qt is clearly QtQuick, so I've been learning that. Has its warts, but in general I like the declarative paradigm. It's a learning curve. Overall it's fairly powerful, flexible and portable. I For me QtQuick and QML are a step backwards by some ten years when it comes to development speed. It's as much 'fun' as doing GUIs with HTML and JavaScript. Unfortunately, The Qt Company refused to provide an API for QtQuick to be able to use it without QML. Anyway, desktop development has long moved out of their focus (around 15 years ago when Nokia acquired Trolltech). It's not where their commercial customers are. Regards, Dietmar -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 4/1/23 09:37, Eryk Sun wrote: > Here are a few of the GUI toolkit libraries in common use: > > * tkinter (Tk) > * PyQt (Qt) > * PySide (Qt) > * wxPython (wxWidgets) > * PyGObject (GTK) > > tkinter is included in Python's standard library. Another good one is Kivy. Especially if you ever want to target mobile in the future. https://kivy.org/ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 4/2/23 05:09, Dietmar Schwertberger wrote: > I also did evaluate all the GUI builder from time to time between > 2000 and 2016 to find one that I could recommend to colleagues, > but could not find one. Then I started contributing to wxGlade > and I can say that since a few years it's as easy again to > build GUIs as it was with VB6. > > I don't want to go back to coding GUIs manually. For most use > cases it's a waste of time and often it does not result in the > best GUI as it's not so easy to try out and rearrange elements. But any modern GUI toolkit has sizers and layout managers. If you're manually placing elements you cannot deal with HiDPI or changing window sizes. Rearranging happens automatically when using sizers and layout managers. That said, the future of GUIs is declarative, using XAML or some other domain-specific language like QML. Examples of this include QtQuick (the long-term direction Qt is heading), and the various dot Net GUI toolkits now popular including MS' own MAUI, WPF, Avalonia. GUI designer tools (Qt Creator, Visual Studio) can be used to assist and help layout the skeleton, but ultimately the GUI is defined by code. And it works very well, is adaptive, and can automatically size and rearrange. If you want portability to mobile devices, this is where it's at. I've tried wxGlade but never could get into it, or wxWidgets in general. I used to use GTK a lot and did use Glade back then, and dynamically loaded the UI definition files at run time. Lately used more Qt with QtDesigner, and even extended Designer to support using some custom widgets I made. but the future of Qt is clearly QtQuick, so I've been learning that. Has its warts, but in general I like the declarative paradigm. It's a learning curve. Overall it's fairly powerful, flexible and portable. I have used the designer in Qt Creator a bit, but it's often faster and just as intuitive to write it in QML, since you're going to be dropping into QML frequently anyway to set properties (not unlike having to set widget properties in Qt Designer. So I guess it's 6s using the graphical designer vs straight Qt. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Windows Gui Frontend
On 02.04.2023 01:13, Alan Gauld wrote: I did a deep dive examination of GUI builders back around v2.6 and came away less than enthused. Things may have improved since then but I've seen no real evidence of that. I also did evaluate all the GUI builder from time to time between 2000 and 2016 to find one that I could recommend to colleagues, but could not find one. Then I started contributing to wxGlade and I can say that since a few years it's as easy again to build GUIs as it was with VB6. I don't want to go back to coding GUIs manually. For most use cases it's a waste of time and often it does not result in the best GUI as it's not so easy to try out and rearrange elements. Regards, Dietmar -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Aw: Re: Windows Gui Frontend
> The real time consuming stuff in building GUIs is getting > the basic design right and keeping all the controls, > keyboard bindings and menus in sync. State management > in other words. And cominmg up with sensible design choices _at all_. > I did a deep dive examination of GUI builders back around > v2.6 and came away less than enthused. Things may have > improved since then but I've seen no real evidence of > that. Is this available anywhere ? What GUI builders do (for me) is to make creating the GUI in a WYSIWYM way. Like LyX for LaTeX. Karsten -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
