Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

[Ed Leafe]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

On Dec 20, 2004, at 7:25 AM, Bulba! wrote:
[color=blue]
> The long lists of invoices, subcontractors and tasks (possibly
> hundreds or thousands) will have to be displayed - which toolkit
> is better for that in your experience?
>
> I would appreciate anybody sharing their experiences with
> relevant toolkits in development of this type of software
> or similar.[/color]

You might want to check out Dabo, an application framework of which I
am one of the authors. We use wxPython as our UI toolkit, but have
streamlined the programming of the UI. We've also added data binding,
making developing apps that need to work with a database much, much
simpler.

Even though Dabo is still in development, I've used it to create an
app that helps me manage the archives of the technical email lists I
host (currently holding over a quarter-million rows).

___/
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Ed Leafe

http://leafe.com/

http://dabodev.com/

[Jarek Zgoda]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

Bulba! wrote:
[color=blue]
> - QT seems to be industrial-strength, but.. it's probably
> more complex/difficult to use.
>
> - wxPython/PythonCard is probably simple to use, but..
> are there not some pitfalls that development will fall
> into once the app starts growing (they all do)?[/color]

From my point of view, PyQt is easier to use (and is simpler, runs
faster, looks better on Linux etc), while wxPython is much cheaper (and
runs faster on Windows). As I am guerilla Python programmer (and try to
drive as much Python into company as I can), I use wxPython on Windows
platform as it doesn't trigger unnecessary questions on licensing,
pricing et caetera.

wxPython has very nice GUI builder (wxGlade), it is not about as
complete as Qt Designer, but speeds-up development significantly.

--
Jarek Zgoda
http://jpa.berlios.de/ | http://www.zgodowie.org/

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

Dave Cook <davecook@nowhe re.net> writes:[color=blue]
> Web browser "widgets" seem pretty limited to me, though.[/color]

You might not care.
[color=blue]
> You don't even have something as simple as a combo box (i.e. an
> editable entry with a drop down),[/color]

Just put an input field and a dropdown on the page.
[color=blue]
> let alone the rich set of widgets something like wxwidgets offers.[/color]

The rich set of widgets is sort of like a rich set of fonts in a word
processor. Most of the time, your document can function perfectly
well with just one font.
[color=blue]
> Also web development doesn't seem as coherent to me as development
> with a good GUI framework.[/color]

I'm not sure what that means. But yeah, any gui (web or client side)
tends to need a lot of tweaking.

[Bulba!]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:20:48 -0500, Ed Leafe <ed@leafe.com > wrote:

[color=blue]
> You might want to check out Dabo, an application framework of which I
>am one of the authors. We use wxPython as our UI toolkit, but have
>streamlined the programming of the UI. We've also added data binding,
>making developing apps that need to work with a database much, much
>simpler.[/color]

This advice of yours (thanks) may have "slashdotte d" your site by
flood of requests from Python programmers all looking at your
website. ;-)

"Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /."





--
It's a man's life in a Python Programming Association.

[kdahlhaus@yahoo.com]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

> ZOPE could provide the workaround but ZOPE seems really huge to[color=blue]
> me and an overkill for this. Or maybe it would work?[/color]

I am intenionally *not* trying to argue web vs traditional gui for your
app, but to tuck away for future apps, CherryPy2 is a lot easier than
Zope to use and programming it does not require much of a learning
curve.

Recently I did a simple app that started as wx Windows, got bogged
down, and switched to CherryPy/Cheetah running locally on the users
station. I know more about wxWindows now than before, so perhaps
things would be different now, but at the time the gui was really
slowing my down my development. I had a hard time getting my hands
around the wxWindows sizers. They are simple in concept, but not easy
to learn at first in practice.

I went w/wxPython for a second app because of its printing capabilities
and the large number of controls that come with it. Otherwise I would
use pyFltk for small apps.

[huy]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

Dave Cook wrote:[color=blue]
> On 2004-12-20, Paul Rubin <http> wrote:
>
>[color=green]
>>I think I can put together a useable (but not visually stunning) web
>>interface faster than I can put together any pure client-side
>>interface.[/color]
>
>
> Web browser "widgets" seem pretty limited to me, though. You don't even
> have something as simple as a combo box (i.e. an editable entry with a drop
> down), let alone the rich set of widgets something like wxwidgets offers.
> Also web development doesn't seem as coherent to me as development with a
> good GUI framework.[/color]

I think it depends on your target audience. Many people love simplicity.
Many people hate multiple tabs, tree structures, deep nested menus etc
etc. If you wanted to make a web program as complex as a rich client
program then it's probably a bad idea to do as a web program. But If you
wanted to keep it simple, then I'd go with a web program any day.


Huy

[Steve Holden]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

huy wrote:
[color=blue]
> Dave Cook wrote:
>[color=green]
>> On 2004-12-20, Paul Rubin <http> wrote:
>>
>>[color=darkred]
>>> I think I can put together a useable (but not visually stunning) web
>>> interface faster than I can put together any pure client-side
>>> interface.[/color]
>>
>>
>>
>> Web browser "widgets" seem pretty limited to me, though. You don't even
>> have something as simple as a combo box (i.e. an editable entry with a
>> drop
>> down), let alone the rich set of widgets something like wxwidgets offers.
>> Also web development doesn't seem as coherent to me as development with a
>> good GUI framework.[/color]
>
>
> I think it depends on your target audience. Many people love simplicity.
> Many people hate multiple tabs, tree structures, deep nested menus etc
> etc. If you wanted to make a web program as complex as a rich client
> program then it's probably a bad idea to do as a web program. But If you
> wanted to keep it simple, then I'd go with a web program any day.[/color]

Indeed the best advice to many programmers is to spend A LOT of time
considering the user interface, since that's what will often have the
major impact on user experience, and hence ultimately on acceptance.

I still moan about having to use EIGHT mouse clicks in Mozilla 1.7 to
change my default SMTP host to the other one on a list of two. Which
remionds me, time to check out the latest release ...

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/
Holden Web LLC +1 703 861 4237 +1 800 494 3119

[Dave Cook]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

On 2004-12-21, Paul Rubin <http> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Dave Cook <davecook@nowhe re.net> writes:[color=green]
>> Web browser "widgets" seem pretty limited to me, though.[/color]
>
> You might not care.[/color]

And in that case Tk is much simpler than just about anything else, unless
looks are really important.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> You don't even have something as simple as a combo box (i.e. an
>> editable entry with a drop down),[/color]
>
> Just put an input field and a dropdown on the page.[/color]

Takes up twice as much space and is potentially confusing as the dropdowns
tend to look like real combo boxes in IE and Mozilla (only Konquerer seems
to make it visually clear that you can't edit the text.)
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Also web development doesn't seem as coherent to me as development
>> with a good GUI framework.[/color]
>
> I'm not sure what that means.[/color]

Basically it means that I find it harder and less intuitive. I don't think
I'm stupid, just pragmatically lazy.

Dave Cook

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

Dave Cook <davecook@nowhe re.net> writes:[color=blue][color=green]
> > You might not care.[/color]
>
> And in that case Tk is much simpler than just about anything else, unless
> looks are really important.[/color]

I've used tk and I don't think it's simpler than html.
[color=blue]
> Takes up twice as much space and is potentially confusing as the dropdowns
> tend to look like real combo boxes in IE and Mozilla (only Konquerer seems
> to make it visually clear that you can't edit the text.)[/color]

I guess I'm not clear on when this is needed.
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> >> Also web development doesn't seem as coherent to me as development
> >> with a good GUI framework.[/color]
> >
> > I'm not sure what that means.[/color]
>
> Basically it means that I find it harder and less intuitive. I
> don't think I'm stupid, just pragmatically lazy.[/color]

I don't think you're stupid either, but it looks like what's intuitive
for you might be less intuitive for (some) other people, and vice
versa.

[Al Christians]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

>>> Web browser "widgets" seem pretty limited to me, though. You don't even[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> have something as simple as a combo box (i.e. an editable entry with
>>> a drop
>>> down), let alone the rich set of widgets something like wxwidgets
>>> offers.
>>> Also web development doesn't seem as coherent to me as development
>>> with a
>>> good GUI framework.[/color]
>>
>> I think it depends on your target audience. Many people love
>> simplicity.[/color][/color]

wxPython has an HTML control that lets you do most of your UI web-like
and just drop in the other wxWidgets kinds of controls here and there if
you need to. The html control does most of the rendering and such, and
you can do most of the user interaction with standard clickable links,
etc, but you can also mix in the full boat of high-powered gizmos to
perplex the users when you run out of other tactics and annoyances.

Is it pretty? As a conglomerate with features of a desktop app and
features of a browser-based app, it's kind of pretty like a platypus.
Platypus, penguin, or python, there's many a way to lay an egg.


Al

[McBooCzech]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

Sorry to bother, but I didn't find the final answer to the question
what is the "Best GUI for small-scale accounting app"?

I am the newbie in Python, so I am trying to find some "usable" GUI as
well. But it looks to me there is a lot developers, beta-versions,
tools etc. I have spent a lot of time trying to find which is the
"best" one tool. But now it looks more confusing to me than at the
beginning.

I do not have time to try/test all of them, it is so time-consuming
and confusing specially for total beginner.

IMHO this is the worst think for the Python community: you can find
one Python only with an excellent support. Great!!!! But on the other
hand it is possible to find plenty of GUI tools and for the beginner
(and may be not just for the beginner) it is so hard to choose the
"proper" one!!!!! The field of GUI tools is so fragmented!!!! that I
am close to give it up and start with some commercial product like
Delphi/Kilyx.

BTW you did not discussed Boa, Wingware and BlackAdde (last two are
commercial) here? Are they bad?

Petr

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

"McBooCzech " <petr@tpc.cz> writes:[color=blue]
> I am the newbie in Python, so I am trying to find some "usable" GUI as
> well. But it looks to me there is a lot developers, beta-versions,
> tools etc. I have spent a lot of time trying to find which is the
> "best" one tool. But now it looks more confusing to me than at the
> beginning.[/color]

If all you want is "usable", use Tkinter. And if you're a newbie, use
Tkinter. After you've gotten some experience with Tkinter is the time
to start worrying about "best".

[JanC]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

McBooCzech schreef:
[color=blue]
> IMHO this is the worst think for the Python community: you can find
> one Python only with an excellent support. Great!!!! But on the other
> hand it is possible to find plenty of GUI tools and for the beginner
> (and may be not just for the beginner) it is so hard to choose the
> "proper" one!!!!! The field of GUI tools is so fragmented!!!![/color]

I think the field of GUI frameworks / tools for Python is fragmented
because it's fragmented outside of Python too...


--
JanC

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

[Paul Rubin]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

Ed Leafe <ed@leafe.com > writes:[color=blue]
> Oh, geez. After months of us getting skewered for releasing
> Dabo under GPL, with everyone saying that they wouldn't even *look* at
> it for fear of 'infecting' all of their code, we change the license to
> the MIT license, and now the complaint is that Microsoft is going to
> sell the code![/color]

Well, those are commercial developers who are afraid of the GPL. If
they want to require people to pay to use the code they release, then
they, just like Microsoft, should also expect to pay the developers of
the components they use. If I were you I would have stood firm on the
GPL, unless they offered you funding.
[color=blue]
> Ever get that feeling that you can't win? ;-)[/color]

I don't see how you lose with the GPL, unless you count missing out on
the exciting opportunity to be an unpaid employee of someone else's
corporation, without even getting back improvements made to your code.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > I hope Dabo can read the xml files Glade generates, so you have a gui
> > builder that's already deployed.[/color]
>
> That's definitely part of the development plan. But after
> looking at Glade and several other designers, our conclusion is that
> they all lack something: either flexibility, ease of use, or something
> else. Sizers were probably the item that was the most difficult thing
> to handle well. The best designer for sizers we found was Qt
> Designer. We'd like to make our designer as visually clear as that one.[/color]

I'm not sure what sizers are, but why not just add them to Glade?
[color=blue]
> Also, Dabo is not just a UI toolkit: it's a full 3-tier
> application framework. Our major design goal is to integrate the
> database connections defined into the UI designer, so that you can
> drag and drop fields from the tables in the connection onto the design
> surface, and create data-bound controls in one step.[/color]

Ehhh, sounds a little too much like javabeans :).

[Ed Leafe]

Re: Best GUI for small-scale accounting app?

On Dec 28, 2004, at 1:16 PM, Paul Rubin wrote:
[color=blue]
> Well, those are commercial developers who are afraid of the GPL.[/color]

No, they were several members of the Python community. I disagreed
with their interpretation of the GPL, but the fact remains that it was
a major stumbling block to getting others involved.
[color=blue]
> I don't see how you lose with the GPL, unless you count missing out on
> the exciting opportunity to be an unpaid employee of someone else's
> corporation, without even getting back improvements made to your code.[/color]

The downside is gaining critical mass for the project. Having several
visible Python folks refuse to even look at what we were doing was not
helping things at all. And I think it the chances of someone else using
my code without payment or anything is a pretty small risk. We still
own copyright, which means that while they can use it, they can't claim
it's theirs.
[color=blue]
> I'm not sure what sizers are[/color]

OIC - then this is not going to be very fruitful.
[color=blue]
> Ehhh, sounds a little too much like javabeans :).[/color]

No, it sounds like every other development environment for creating
database applications. I looked a long time for something like this in
Python before undertaking the writing of it myself.

___/
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/
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Ed Leafe

http://leafe.com/

http://dabodev.com/