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Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

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Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#141

Post by djsumdog »

wiremine wrote: post #3

Not directly related to the initiative itself, but comparing and contrasting the Electron website vs. PyQT is striking: https://riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/intro https://electronjs.org/ I've been a (proud) Pythonist for years now, and I've always been a bit chagrined by the quality of the "marketing" of Python projects. It doesn't at all reflect the quality of the community and the projects.

I prefer the pyqt website. No stupid animations. No bullshit. Just clear links to all the information you need, easily available docs, etc. I mean, it's kind a real reflection of the two frameworks. Do you want a framework that requires a 90MB payload with it that's a resource hog and a web browser or do you want something small, light and works?

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#142

Post by tclancy »

wiremine wrote: post #3

Not directly related to the initiative itself, but comparing and contrasting the Electron website vs. PyQT is striking: https://riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/intro https://electronjs.org/ I've been a (proud) Pythonist for years now, and I've always been a bit chagrined by the quality of the "marketing" of Python projects. It doesn't at all reflect the quality of the community and the projects.

Aw, but it appears to be run by Trac and that always gives me flashbacks to the good old days.

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#143

Post by FridgeSeal »

kbutler wrote: post #130
mherrmann wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see the tutorial? https://github.com/mherrmann/fbs-tutorial

That's his point. With a web app, his experience tells him he can run the code within an environment that he's used to. With PyQt, he needs to download and install PyQt. When ready to ship, he needs to figure out how to build it into an app that can be delivered to clients. With web technologies, he knows how to get deliver code in ways it can be loaded in a web browser, and how he can deliver code to end users. Thou…

Yes god forbid anyone ever need to learn something new to do something different.

The web has a lot of great advantages for sure, but native applications have advantages and can do things that are unwieldy and inefficient via the web.

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#144

Post by guhcampos »

Unfortunatelly PyQt does not solve the problem of Javascript engineers who are not willing to learn a new programming language.

That's the whole reason for the whole Javascript fadigue. Computer Science has had "had tools for the right jobs" for years, but now we have a large developer base that only knows Javascript and think it's some kind of holy grail of computing. Happened before with Java. Happened before with PHP. It will happen again.

It even happened in Python, too. I personally attribute a whole generation of failure for the Linux Desktop to the "Python for Desktop" frenzy of the Gnome 2/KDE 4 times. I remember I had a dual-boot Pentium 4 box, and while Windows apps were always slick and responsive, Linux always felt sluggish and unresponsive, until I found C/C++ alternatives to all the apps I used.

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#145

Post by Klonoar »

nabla9 wrote: post #128
Klonoar wrote: post #116

Every time this argument comes up, I see the same tired comments, and they're typically from people that don't have to build a modern UI. There is an insane amount that you get for free in HTML/CSS/JS, and it's very clear why things like Qt & co don't stack up. Here's a small list (which could easily be a much bigger list) of things that are much easier in web dev land than their native counterparts. - Want to chart…

Here is an example of modern UI build with Qt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7en65HkjeQ&t=39

That's a killer UI, and I'm happy to admit it's incredibly good for what I've seen/used of Qt apps over the years... but it's not the norm. I would honestly pay money to see how much effort it took to get it to this.

There's also the point I forgot to mention in my original post, which is that... if your entire app starts as a webapp, there's no sense in maintaining an entire separate Qt codebase when you could just wrap it. Standalone products like this (embedded, etc) might have an easier time justifying it, but I really don't think it hits the ease of use metric (not even touching on the fact that you then need to handle product changes across multiple codebases/teams - money doesn't absolve your, your team or your company of the inherent difficulty here).

Also, hell, the simple act of refactoring native level UI code is often more of a PITA than the HTML/CSS/JS counterpart. Native APIs need to make themselves more accessible and sexy if they want to have a chance here.

Alsoooo to just end this rant of mine, I'll point out that the OP's project shouldn't charge money for this. It's not that they're not allowed to or anything like that, but you're in no way making PyQT a viable Electron alternative if you require licensing. There's little money in building UI frameworks for this reason; the web kind of requires you to compete on free to use. There are people (regardless of your take on the matter) that don't use Qt for licensing reasons and that is a hard blocker.

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#146

Post by tathougies »

horsawlarway wrote: post #42
kelnos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? I've uninstalled the Slack desktop app and just use the website because the app is such a terrible experience.

Wow. You realize they share most of the same code, and are essentially feature identical? Seriously, open the desktop app, then open the web app. They're identical. Precisely because they chose to use a toolkit that let them easily handle cross platform issues with UI in a sane and repeatable manner.

Yes, that's the problem. Web apps are never going to have the level of system integration that you'd expect with a native desktop app. Why install a 'native app' that offers you the subpar web experience when you could just open it in your browser?

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#147

Post by Klonoar »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #28
wiremine wrote: post #3

Not directly related to the initiative itself, but comparing and contrasting the Electron website vs. PyQT is striking: https://riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/intro https://electronjs.org/ I've been a (proud) Pythonist for years now, and I've always been a bit chagrined by the quality of the "marketing" of Python projects. It doesn't at all reflect the quality of the community and the projects.

PyQt is just the Python binding for Qt, so don't expect a fully polished website there. If you really want to compare Electron with QT, I suggest looking at the main QT website: https://www.qt.io/ Also, having developed apps in both frameworks I would say that it's easier to get started with Electron if you come from a HTML/CSS/JS background, but apps written in QT look more native and like "real" desktop apps to me.…

It's not crazy to expect a UI toolkit website (even if it's just the bindings...) to have a better presence/pitch to make the sell. UI toolkits are built on how good they look and what they enable you to do, and the last thing PyQt should be doing is forcing people to check out a very marketing-heavy Qt main page.

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#148

Post by yetanother1980 »

horsawlarway wrote: post #42
kelnos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? I've uninstalled the Slack desktop app and just use the website because the app is such a terrible experience.

Wow. You realize they share most of the same code, and are essentially feature identical? Seriously, open the desktop app, then open the web app. They're identical. Precisely because they chose to use a toolkit that let them easily handle cross platform issues with UI in a sane and repeatable manner.

Except electron is a lot more resource heavy than one tab in a browser.

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#149

Post by jubjubbird »

So this is a wrapper for PyInstaller? I see that it creates an installer .exe on Windows or a dmg on Mac, which is nice (I'm having trouble with PyQt and the latter at the moment).

It's unclear what the other advantages over PyInstaller are. Does @cached_property provide a performance benefit?

Re: Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT

#150

Post by anaptdemise »

ReverseCold wrote: post #123
eivarv wrote: post #110

Serious question: Why do so many people think building desktop application GUIs with web-technologies is a good idea? I'm currently trying to formulate some thoughts on this; While I understand that HTML/CSS generally seems more flexible and may be more easily accessible to more/newer devs, it carries huge, negative implications in the forms of HCI (not having consistent interface elements on the user platform), perf…

It's easy to do. That's it. Why learn frameworks and UI paradigms for different platforms if you can just build it once? You can have a desktop app in under an hour if you already have a web app.

https://msorvig.github.io/qt-webassembly-examples/gui_opengl...

[edit] There is also emscripten-qt. Full circle.

http://vps2.etotheipiplusone.com:30176/redmine/projects/emsc...

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