GUI Frameworks in Python?

[Peter Maas]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Roel Schroeven wrote:[color=blue]
> Whenever I make even the smallest wxPython program, it takes multiple
> seconds before the window is visible. Last time I tried was on a Pentium
> 4-M 2.2 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. Not a slow machine, and other software
> runs just fine.
>
> It's really annoying, and nothing I do seems to improve the situation.[/color]

Did you try a preload? You can start an invisible task that keeps
the wxpython stuff in memory. You could even start this task as a
Win32 service so that it is loaded prior to any login.

BTW, the load time is not only due to GUI libs. Python itself does
also have a share. Just tried that with a command line script and
my rough estimate is that approx. 50% of the wxpython load delay
is due to Python itself (at least on my machine: Win 2000, 800MHz,
256 MByte).

Mit freundlichen Gruessen,

Peter Maas

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[Jørgen Cederberg]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Gary Herron wrote:[color=blue]
> On Tuesday 30 March 2004 05:35 am, Hugh Macdonald wrote:
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>>GTK: Unknown - I'm looking into it today
>>>
>>>Is this Linux only ?
>>>(pardon my terrible ignorance...)[/color]
>>
>>Yeah - it is... I'n only developing for Linux here...[/color]
>
>[/color]
<snip GTK _is_ cross-platform>[color=blue]
>
> Here's several pointers:
> http://www.async.com.br/faq/pygtk/in...=faq21.012.htp
> http://www.pcpm.ucl.ac.be/~gustin/win32_ports/
>
> Gary Herron
>[/color]

Hi,

i downloaded and installed the GTK runtime environment v. 2.2.4-2 and
PyGTK 2.2.0 for Python 2.3. The installation went fine and I added the
path to GTK/lib and bin. I run a helloworld program, but unfortunely I
get this error message which I quite puzzled about (translated from danish)

(helloworld.py: 3308): Gtk-WARNING **: Could not find the theme engine in
module_path: 'wimp'

Does anyone have clue what to do?

Regards
Jorgen Cederberg

[Roel Schroeven]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Peter Maas wrote:[color=blue]
> Roel Schroeven wrote:
>[color=green]
>> Whenever I make even the smallest wxPython program, it takes multiple
>> seconds before the window is visible. Last time I tried was on a
>> Pentium 4-M 2.2 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. Not a slow machine, and other
>> software runs just fine.
>>
>> It's really annoying, and nothing I do seems to improve the situation.[/color]
>
>
> Did you try a preload? You can start an invisible task that keeps
> the wxpython stuff in memory. You could even start this task as a
> Win32 service so that it is loaded prior to any login.[/color]

That might be a good idea -- I'll try that the next time I'm doing some
wxPython work.
[color=blue]
> BTW, the load time is not only due to GUI libs. Python itself does
> also have a share. Just tried that with a command line script and
> my rough estimate is that approx. 50% of the wxpython load delay
> is due to Python itself (at least on my machine: Win 2000, 800MHz,
> 256 MByte).[/color]

In my experience, loading Python itself is very fast. Perhaps not if it
isn't yet cached in memory, but afterwards that doesn't seem to be where
the problem is.

That said, I just tried a simple little program, and it seems to be much
faster than what I remember from 6 months ago. I'm not doing any
wxPython work right now, but I'll do some more checking before
complaining about startup speed again.

--
"Codito ergo sum"
Roel Schroeven

[Andrew Malcolmson]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

GUI's seem to be more like documents than programs, so I wonder why
we're not considering more declarative type interface builders. Is
there such a thing, maybe that writes out a standard specification
file instead of code? If it were XML, you could write a XSL filter to
make the all the modifications you needed to accomodate a different
platform.

Another thing: I understand that Miguel de (I forget), the Gnome guy,
has stated that the two programs that really have done cross platform
best are Mozilla and Abiword. There was once a Python binding for
Mozilla's widget library XUL but I don't don't what's happended to
that. Anone know if this is relevant to our discussion of cross
platform GUI's?

[Peter Hansen]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Andrew Malcolmson wrote:[color=blue]
> GUI's seem to be more like documents than programs, so I wonder why
> we're not considering more declarative type interface builders.[/color]

Mitch Kapor talked about this, I believe, as being part of the
Chandler project's approach, at the Birds-Of-a-Feather session on
Chandler at PyCon last week.

There might be notes about this somewhere, maybe in the docs on

http://www.osafoundation.org/

-Peter

[Lars Heuer]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Hi Andrew,
[color=blue]
> best are Mozilla and Abiword. There was once a Python binding for
> Mozilla's widget library XUL but I don't don't what's happended to
> that. Anone know if this is relevant to our discussion of cross
> platform GUI's?[/color]

I think, Mozilla is relevant for x-platform GUIs
There is an interesting project (but wrong licence, in IMO), called
MozPython, which embeds Python into Mozilla.

http://www.thomas-schilz.de/MozPython/README.html

pyXPCOM is still alive, but I think, the lack of pyXPCOM documentation
is a problem here.
ActiveState's Komodo is build with Mozilla and pyXPCOM

http://www.thomas-schilz.de/MozPython/README.html

Another problem of Mozilla / XUL is, that you've to switch between
your programming languages: JavaScript for XUL and your favorite
programming language in the back. If your favorite programming lang
is JavaScript, you don't have to switch, of course. ;)

If someone is interested in Mozilla as platform, than the following
sources might be helpful:

XUL / XPCOM

http://www.xulplanet.com/

http://www.xulplanet.com/forum/

ActiveState's site abt. pyXPCOM

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/Komodo/PyXPCOM/

http://pyxpcom.mozdev.org/ (outdated / dead?)

IBM dW serie about pyXPCOM

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/components/library/co-pyxp1.html

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/components/library/co-pyxp2.html

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/components/library/co-pyxp3/

Best regards,
Lars

[Lars Heuer]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

[color=blue]
> If someone is interested in Mozilla as platform, than the following
> sources might be helpful:[/color]

.... and of course:
"Creating Applications with Mozilla"

http://books.mozdev.org/chapters/index.html

Best regards,
Lars

[Lothar Scholz]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Peter Hansen <peter@engcorp. com> wrote in message news:<qYCdna1kj d3fBPTdRVn-tw@powergate.ca >...
[color=blue]
>
> Go figure. (And as I said this is an AMD 2200 with 512MB RAM, XP Pro.)[/color]

You and all others miss one important number: What a harddisk are you
using ?
A notebook with a 4200rpm has a much lower startup time then a
7200rpm. It is as strange as a 10 against 2 seconds for the same
program on WinXP when compiled with Borland instead MS Visual C.

[Josiah Carlson]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

> GUI's seem to be more like documents than programs, so I wonder why[color=blue]
> we're not considering more declarative type interface builders. Is
> there such a thing, maybe that writes out a standard specification
> file instead of code? If it were XML, you could write a XSL filter to
> make the all the modifications you needed to accomodate a different
> platform.[/color]

Dude, you should really check out the wxXMLResource and
wxXMLResourceHa ndler. I don't use XML to write GUIs, but if I did,
those would be my savior.

Download the wxPython demo and give it a look.

- Josiah

[Dave Reed]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?


I second the recommendation of Gtk/Glade/libglade with Python. I've
used it to write large programs and can confirm that gtk2 will also
work on Windows (although I haven't done much other than verify it
works). I've written some software to further automate the process of
writing GUI programs using Glade/libglade. I'm putting the finishing
touches on an article I will be submitting to Linux Journal describing
the software. It will hopefully be published in the July issue. I will
be releasing the software under the GPL license.

I am almost certain that on Linux/Unix wxWindows is just a layer on
top of gtk so gtk will certainly be a little faster than
wxWindows. I'm not certain what wxWindows runs on top of on MS
Windows.

Dave

[Peter Hansen]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Lothar Scholz wrote:
[color=blue]
> Peter Hansen <peter@engcorp. com> wrote in message news:<qYCdna1kj d3fBPTdRVn-tw@powergate.ca >...
>
>[color=green]
>>Go figure. (And as I said this is an AMD 2200 with 512MB RAM, XP Pro.)[/color]
>
>
> You and all others miss one important number: What a harddisk are you
> using ?
> A notebook with a 4200rpm has a much lower startup time then a
> 7200rpm. It is as strange as a 10 against 2 seconds for the same
> program on WinXP when compiled with Borland instead MS Visual C.[/color]

An excellent question...

My hard disk is a "lightning fast" Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM Serial-ATA
drive with liquid bearings and an 8MB cache...

Clearly it's those liquid bearings that make it so fast. ;-)

-Peter

[JanC]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Lars Heuer <python@quixs.c om> schreef:
[color=blue]
> Another problem of Mozilla / XUL is, that you've to switch between
> your programming languages: JavaScript for XUL and your favorite
> programming language in the back. If your favorite programming lang
> is JavaScript, you don't have to switch, of course. ;)[/color]

But look at what Mozilla.org are planning:
<http://www.mozilla.org/events/dev-day-feb-2004/mozilla-futures/langs.html>

--
JanC

"Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving."
RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet - section 3.9

[Lorenzo Gatti]

GTK2 Windows installation Was: Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Jørgen Cederberg <jorgencederber g@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<Fqwac.538 $_n1.337@news.g et2net.dk>...
[color=blue]
>
> Hi,
>
> i downloaded and installed the GTK runtime environment v. 2.2.4-2 and
> PyGTK 2.2.0 for Python 2.3. The installation went fine and I added the
> path to GTK/lib and bin. I run a helloworld program, but unfortunely I
> get this error message which I quite puzzled about (translated from danish)
>
> (helloworld.py: 3308): Gtk-WARNING **: Could not find the theme engine in
> module_path: 'wimp'
>
> Does anyone have clue what to do?
>
> Regards
> Jorgen Cederberg[/color]

I had the same harmless warning and I moved libwimp.dll to
somewhere\GTK\2 .0\lib\gtk-2.0\2.2.0\engin es (a new directory, sister
of "loaders" and "immodules" ).

Lorenzo Gatti

[Chris Perkins]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Peter Hansen <peter@engcorp. com> wrote in message news:<XbGdnfXcw oMmNvTdRVn-tA@powergate.ca >...
[color=blue]
> Running that repeatedly (sorry, can't reboot conveniently
> right now, so can't get the first time) it takes 0.125 s
> on my machine.
>[/color]

Nobody seems to have mentioned wxPython version numbers in this
discussion.

I just upgraded from 2.4.2.4 to 2.5.1.5, and the start-up time for the
demo app went from about 5 seconds to less than a second.


Chris

[Peter Hansen]

Re: GUI Frameworks in Python?

Chris Perkins wrote:
[color=blue]
> Peter Hansen <peter@engcorp. com> wrote in message news:<XbGdnfXcw oMmNvTdRVn-tA@powergate.ca >...
>
>[color=green]
>>Running that repeatedly (sorry, can't reboot conveniently
>>right now, so can't get the first time) it takes 0.125 s
>>on my machine.[/color]
>
> Nobody seems to have mentioned wxPython version numbers in this
> discussion.
>
> I just upgraded from 2.4.2.4 to 2.5.1.5, and the start-up time for the
> demo app went from about 5 seconds to less than a second.[/color]

I've been running 2.4.1.2 on Python 2.3.3... If I had the same
absolute speedup going to 2.5.1.5 it would be running before
I managed to click on its icon! ;-)

-Peter