I made a really simple, pseudo GUI using pythondialogue (its a wrapper for whiptail for bash), I need it to be cross platform between linux and Mac OSX. The main issue is its really hard to find information on pythondialogue, the only documentation seems to be on their own site. I would just use whiptail, but I'm learning python so using this to hone my python skills.
What I like about pythondialogue (and whiptail) is that its not really a GUI, just a dialogue inside the CLI, so it can used purely through the command line such as if you SSH to the computer you want to run it on. Can tkinter do this too?
Either way, a big thing I'm wondering is what benefits tkinter would provide over regular pythondialogue. Obviously the difference is it lets you create proper GUI applications, but would it be wisest to only create a GUI application in cases where its absolutely necessary?
tkinter sounds like the easiest way to code GUIs in python. What disadvantages does it have to PyQt or wxPython. I wan't to start developing mobile apps as soon as possible and I see iOS and android apps can be written using python and Qt can be used to write both Android and iOS apps. So with this in mind, would learning PyQt mean I would also be developing the skills I'll need to create iOS and android apps? If so, this is most definitely what I'm going to do.
Learning PyQt will definitely help you learn to create IOS and Android apps. Even more, PyQt comes with QtDesinger which is a visual editor for creating apps with minimal coding. Tkinter in my perspective is for very light GUI programming. If you feel like you want to make money of these apps, I would highly advise you to check out Kivy.
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Need advise from those who have minimum health experience to design GUI interfaces with Python.
When and what to choose depending of GUI complexity?
Which GUI builders can we use to have a better development quality?
This is my first GUI design, and I've did it without GUI builder, at the moment stacked because I've understood, that ObjectListView wrapper for wx.ListCtrl haven't natively to include easily progress bar or gauge elements. (see column "Upload status" from picture).
Note: ObjectListView has progress bar in .Net version, at the moment not in wx.Python.
P.S: I found this wonderful Python GTK+ Full Stack Tutorial
I'm not really sure what you're asking. wxPython and pyQt / pyside are probably the easiest to use on all platforms and will look right on most Operating systems. I know wxPython is specifically designed to wrap the native widgets so if you want your app to look native, I think wxPython is the way to go. If you want to be able to theme/skin your app, then PyQT or pyGTK may be better.
PyQt/PySide supports mobile to some degree, which I don't believe the other two do. If you plan to program for mobile, then you might want to go that route or look at Kivy.
PyQt/PySide have a pretty powerful WYSIWYG editor. wxPython has a couple, but I don't think any of them support all of wx's widgets and their support is spotty. That hasn't stopped me as I do all my coding by hand anyway.
As usual, you'll probably need to read lots of documentation and try each of them to see which one fits your brain and meets your needs best.
Don't use PyGTK if you want cross platform compatibility. GTK3 doesn't work on windows yet (last I checked) and GTK2 has an awful memory leak under windows which has been fixed in the latest source, but no new release has been compiled for windows.
I would put my vote with PySide (more flexible license for commercial options) over PyQt and PySide/PyQt over wxPython simply because I think the GUI designer tool are better! Being able to rapidly create and edit the GUI graphically (and independently of your applications code) is a huge time-saver.
Update: Actually, I'd recommend PyQt over PySide now for stability reasons and long term support. PySide development is lagging, there are very few people fixing bugs and no-one working on support for Qt 5.
PyQT in Windows
PyGTK
PyQT in KDE
PyQT in Windows
PyGTK+3
PyQT in KDE
So if you go with PyQT the design of your application will look different on the different operating systems and desktop environments. I don't have Macintosh so cannot provide a picture how will look my application in it. This is one of my applications written in PyQT and PyGTK+3. Keep in mind that the design will stay as is with PyGTK+3, so there won't be any differences as they are in PyQT. It's definitely the most easiest to learn, as there is a Glade program which will help you to build your design without spending even a minute coding it manually. But with PyQT you can fine tune the application design and it won't make you tear your hair from bugs.
I want to develop a Windows application. Honestly I care little about cross-platforms for now (but still would be good)
I want to use Ruby, since it has quite a simple syntax and is so.. well, simple and easy to learn.
My application is like a "game level creator", where you can design your own level and then run it with another application which is a "game level player" by reading the project file created by the creator app. You get the idea.
Now, I got a new PC and is completely clean. Absolutely no trace of my old Ruby experiments and fails.
First of all, I will need to choose a GUI platform for my Ruby application! Can you recommend me one? I have heard of Shoes and Tk, but want to know what you think.
Have you considered IronRuby? It's an implementation of Ruby that runs on the .Net platform, which means you have access to all of the standard Windows Forms libraries, if you decide to run in Windows. http://ironruby.net/
According to david4dev, it also runs well on Mono, which makes it great for cross-platform compatibility, as the Mono platform runs on Mac OSX and Linux, as well as Windows.
Jorg W Mittag says that using the WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) is an even better option for creating GUI's since Mono has a very strong implementation of the WPF. The WPF was created to be platform agnostic and is better suited for cross-platform development over WinForms, since WinForms is tightly coupled with the Windows OS.
I recommend using Shoes out of the 2. Shoes is a nice simple way to build small applications using Ruby. The reason why Shoes is better than TK for your application is that it makes it very simple to create graphics.
Shoes is well suited to small apps and it will be quite hard to create a game creator using it.
You are probably better off using an SDL based game framework such as Rubygame . This works on Linux, Windows and OSX.
For the simple, typical editing most GUI kit will do just fine. However, for the more complicated (and especially the level creation/editing) you're mostly gonna end up using a lot of self-made rendering in DirectX/OpenGL.
I don't know a lot about Ruby though, but I'd consider GUI kits Or frameworks with that aspect in mind.
Just thought I'd share my 2 cents :)
I am thinking about something that would allow to develop applications independent of the GUI library, but allow Qt and GTK being plugged in as needed.
I'd just use Qt. It includes a Gtk-like style, mimics Gtk standard dialogs and even uses Gtk file dialogs if run under Gnome, so basically it integrates itself into Gtk as good as anything (except Gtk of course), or at least it integrates itself better into Gtk than Gtk does into Qt.
You can try to use wxWidgets but you tend to get "lowest common denominator" if you go that route. Your better bet is to design your software such that you can plug in an implementation of the necessary "views" in the desired toolkit, and keep your core UI toolkit independant.
Obviously this is more work, but if there is a strong business need, then so be it.
I don't know of any framework doing something like that (I don't know how it could possibly be done without suffering from a heavy "lowest-common-denominator" syndrome), but I do "cross toolkit" development (applications that use more than one GUI toolkit) and I wrote an article about why and how to do it:
http://www.hardcoded.net/articles/cross-toolkit-software.htm
You can try Tk, which supports themes. There is a tile-qt and tile-gtk theme. There is a 2010 Google Summer of Code project to improve these themes. And, of course, when you use Tk you also get support for Windows and OSX out of the box.
Qt is a framework, it uses GTK underneath (at least on Unix).
There was a mobile toolkit that let you write everything in JS but compiled to the native code on each platform. I forget the name but it was a victim of the iPhone lockdown.
We are planning to develop an application for monitoring and configuring our service (which is running on remote server). After long time of discussion, we decided for python as platform for our app, because we love and know python. But we don't know, what GUI toolkit preferred for our aims. We need fast (for development and running) app, whose users will be Admins, Maintainers and Account managers.
There are two GUI toolkit for python, which we know: wxPython and pyQT.
Anybody have arguments regarding pro and cons? And maybe someone knows any commercial applications, using these products (only python version of toolkits)? Links are desirable.
Thanks.
I choose wxPython after much research. The reasons were:
"wxPython in Action" book by Rappin & Dunn
The voluminous examples that come as part of the wxPython download
The number of projects that have used wxWidgets
The fact that wxPython code runs equally well on Linux, Mac OS/X and Win32
I did consider pyQT and other researchers are successfully using it. After writing many examples in all API's that I considered, I found wxPython ticked the most boxes for me.
As for Tkinter (TIX), I think it looks rather dated.
Unless you are using IronPython or Jython I would not consider using the associated native windowing APIs. For another project which is to be delivered exclusively on .Net, I plan to use WinForms after lots of great feedback from StackOverflow members.
Well, I am a fan of QT: it has a more modern look and feel. However - your choice should be based on your actual requirements. Simple trade studies are helpful for this. Make a list of what features your toolkit must have and what features would be nice to have and then weight each item appropriately. Then look at all your options (TKinter also) and then score them according to your feature list (using the weights you assigned to each feature requirement). At the end it should be evident which one is right for your project.
I've always liked Qt's "signals and slots" conceptual model, though I guess it may take a bit of learning for developers who are more used to other models of event propagation and handling. Personally, given a choice, I'd pick PyQt because of this programming aspect.
You wrote "There is two GUI toolkit for python, which we know: wxPython and pyQT." You are forgetting about the most obvious toolkit: tkinter. That's actually part of a core python distribution, no extra downloads required.
Some people don't like Tk but that's often due to ignorance. Tk is a fine choice for a cross platform toolkit. It uses native widgets on windows (and has for many years) and the latest versions of tk use themed widgets on all platforms.
i've been using wxpython for 3 years .. and now we had to switch into pyqt since qt is integrated in maya 2011 .. however , wxpython is more straight forward and you can easily start working on it and learn it from zero fast .it provides and awesome resources and decumentation . but QT provides more powerful features that you cant find in wxpython , for example ( the multi touch detection) , QT also provides good support for drawing devices like pc tablets and so on .
qt also provides a good designer that makes u create interfaces faster.
one of qt disadvantages is it's license since it's not free like wxpython
A Windows (and Mono) option for a GUI toolkit is provided by IronPython. It provides access to the Winforms and WPF libraries. For examples, see Developing with IronPython & Windows Forms, and many others.
If you want to expand the list of options, consider building a Web App instead of a (local) GUI app. You say your service runs on a remote server, so networking is part of your requirements.
Once you start down that road, Python provides a bewildering amount of options.
I want to point out two strengths that wxPython has compared to pyQt:
It uses native widgets on every supported platform. So the apps have a native look and feel. I'm aware that PyQt uses native styles, but the behavior ("the feel") is reported to be somewhat non-native especially on the Mac.
It provides a wider choice of widgets out of the box.
You should also check out PyGTK. It is similar to pyQT in programming model but does not have any licensing cost since it is LGPL. I always found it nice to work with as a developer. The main drawback over pyQT is that in some cases they take away functionality in things like file chooser dialogs in favour of simplicity for the user.
I work in the embedded world, using mainly C and no GUI at all (because there is no display screen).
Moving over to the non-embedded world, in which I have nearly no experience, what is the best programming environment (langauge/IDE/etc) for me to build a simple window-form application that will run on all the common platforms: windows/linux/mac-os ?
I do not want to build a web-app.
I have my eye on Python and one of it's widget libraries, QT or WxWidgets. Is that a good option ?
I like GTK+ personally but that or any of the ones you mentioned should be OK. I don't know which is the best in terms of least RAM usage.
Both wx and QT have embedded/universal versions where the widgets are drawn directly.
They can both be called from python,but if you have a very small system python or py2exe might not be available.
Unless you want to embed HtmlWindow I'd go with wxWindows... works everywhere without problems so far for me.
I have both worked with PyQt and wxPython extensively.
PyQt is better designed and comes with very good UI designer so that you can quickly assemble your UI
wxPython has a very good demo and it can do pretty much anything which PyQT can do, I would anyday prefer PyQt but it may bot be free for commercial purpose but wxPython is free and is decent cross platform library.
Qt is a good choice to start with. In my opinion it has a best (easy to use, simple & informative) API Documentation. Package also includes many examples - from very basic to complex. And, yep, it`s truly crossplatform.
Check Qt Licensing page, the library is free only for GPL projects.
I`m using QDevelop as text editor, but there are many other alternatives - Eclipse, KDevelop, Code:Blocks, VS plugin & etc.
Why not use swing and java? It is quite cross platform, and looks reasonable for form apps. If you squint a bit and ignore the java, its quite pleasant - or alternatively, use one of them dynamic languages on the JVM (Groovy is my recommended one).
What kind of application is it going to be? Have you considered a web-based application instead? Web-based apps can be super flexible in that sense - you can run them on any platform that has a modern browser.
By far the simplest choice for creating native cross-platform applications is REALbasic. Give it a try and you'll have a working app for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux in minutes. No run-times or other stuff to worry about.
I think you should try Html Application.It is something like web page it contain DHTML,java script,ActiveX but it is execute like .exe .
Edit:
Sorry for advice you html application.I just know it can run on windows only.