Re: TkPython?

Steven D. Majewski (sdm7g@elvis.med.virginia.edu)
Fri, 1 Apr 1994 14:09:47 -0500

In article <1994Apr1.161355.15184@dal.mobil.com>,
Randy Winney <rawinney@mepsi.mobil.com> wrote:
>The Tcl/Tk package is enjoying enormous popularity because it
>greatly simplifies the building of GUI's. There is an alpha
>version of TkPerl out that adds the GUI building functionality
>to the Perl interpreted language. Is anyone working on something
>like a TkPython that would make it as easy to build and manipulate
>GUI's from within Python as it from within Tcl?
>
>Or, perhaps this is already a feature of Python? - I've used Tcl/Tk
>but not Python yet.
>
>

Since Python is not as firmly bolted down to Unix as either Perl
or Tcl/Tk, there has been more interest in (OS) portable systems.

stdwin is a portable window system from cwi.nl ( the same place
Python originated ). However, stdwin doesn't look "native" on
any of it's platforms, and has a few other limitation that have
put off it's wide use. ( But there is Python support for it. )

SUIT ( Simple User Interface Toolkit ) is a package from UVA
( uvacs.cs.virginia.edu:/pub/suit ) that provides a portable
GUI builder and API for Unix-X11,Macintosh,DOS,MS-Windows and
other platforms. There are a set of Python modules ( .py and .c
code ) to interface SUIT to Python.
( There are precompiled SUIT demo's available - take a look! )

There are Python Xt/Xlib/Motif modules, but there needs to be
more work done on integrating them into easier to use Python
classes. ( There is also an interface to SGI's GL, which I
have gotten to work on an IBM RS/6000 with GL with some minor
hacks. )

There is also a commercial GUI builder, called EzX, that includes
a Python interpreter built into the package.

There has been discussion on the Python mailing list of integrating
Tk and/or other GUI toolkits into Python. I don't know if anyone
is currently working on it.

- Steve Majewski (804-982-0831) <sdm7g@Virginia.EDU>
- UVA Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics