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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

#241

Post by pjmlp »

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.

Exactly, it doesn't have any business being a fake desktop app, just because the devs don't want to learn native frameworks nor how to write portable web applications.

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

#242

Post by pjmlp »

Mononokay wrote: post #168
microtonal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever designed an application with Qt Designer or Delphi for that matter? Both are literally drag and drop. You can make a first mock-up of a application in a few minutes. I have developed some larger Qt applications and in each case there are at most a couple dozen of lines with platform-specific code. Qt abstracts away most of the platform differences. For me ‘good looking UIs and UI patterns’ means: well i…

Neither are as good as 99% of the tools available for development with HTML/CSS. Plus, with HTML/CSS, you can work manually on your project, without any special tool besides your browser, and see the effects you have on the layout in real time. Delphi/Qt Designer look way worse than any HTML/CSS/JS GUI builder, too - along with having interfaces equivalent to what GIMP's is to Photoshop.

> Delphi/Qt Designer look way worse than any HTML/CSS/JS GUI builder, too

Can you please provide an example of such tool?

Doing UI development since Windows 3.x days, and I am yet to find such a tool for HTML/CSS/JS development.

Oh and in the process it would be nice to know about a least one comparable component library for such tool.

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

#243

Post by pjmlp »

alexandernst wrote: post #25
yorwba wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really need the full flexibility of HTML/CSS, you can just use QtWebKit and embed a webview in your UI.

So... it order to replace Electron, let's use QtWebkit, which is basically Electron? :)

If you don't want to learn QML.

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

#244

Post by pjmlp »

revelation wrote: post #8
_em6m wrote: post #4

The main problem with "other toolkits" vs Electron apps is that they are not as simple to use in order to create a very good looking UIs. Compare how easy it is to use HTML and CSS in order to create a very complex UIs with all sort of effects vs how utterly complicated is to override, let's say, Qt's ::paint() method in order to achieve rich text inside a label. Let me repeat it. Rich text inside a label. Such a sim…

If it is so trivial, what is the big deal with "Single Page Applications"? Seems like plenty of pain there in the HTML and CSS world.. Meanwhile, there have never been anything but Single Page Applications in the native world. And sure, Qt is now more than 20 years old, it's from a time strongly rooted in "widget" based UI systems that have somewhat fallen out of favor. That is what QML is for, which similarly to WPF…

While on the web to get GPU acceleration of anything beyond WebGL, it is a guessing game depending on the browser.

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

#245

Post by pjmlp »

monkmartinez wrote: post #54
mherrmann wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except this sucks if, you know, you want to make some money on your app... Why is that a problem? You get a commercial license for PyQt and are good to go(?) > I love Python, but it has stagnated hard in the last few years. The 2 to 3 transition really hurt the Python ecosystem [...] I disagree. I think the ecosystem is more vibrant than ever. > Furthermore, packaging for different platforms is still a problem in 2…

$500 dollars... is "not expensive"? Beside the ML/AI sub-community, I am having a hard time finding GUI innovation in the Python ecosystem. Perhaps, you could show me an option that doesn't suck? I've tried Kivy, PyQt, PySide, Eel, gooey, etc... I am not a JS dev and had an electron/react app up and running that I easily ported to my Android phone in under an hour.

It is a month salary, quite ok if one is making money with the work of others.

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

#246

Post by pjmlp »

monkmartinez wrote: post #74
mherrmann wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on how much time you spend on an app. I've been working on my PyQt app [1] for 2331 hours (I track my time). $500 is nothing in comparison. [1]: https://fman.io

Yeah, I wish you all the luck... but look at it from a new programmer perspective, or someone that wants to create an app for money, but doesn't know if it will work. On one hand you have the complex licensing thing (PyQt) where you are limited to desktop of Mac, Win, Linux. On the other you have a skill (JS dev) that is good for literally any screen, on any platform with almost zero complications for commercial apps…

Yeah, strange how other people outside IT manage to sell their work while having to pay for their tools.

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

#247

Post by toyg »

guhcampos wrote: post #144

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…

> Python for Desktop frenzy

Wat? The PyKDE binding were always an afterthought. The big KDE4 language bet was, guess what... javascript bindings, to build widgets. And then Ruby bindings, since Ruby had just exploded. Except web developers never cared for the Linux desktop, they are Mac users.

If anything, python bindings allowed a generation of new distros like Mint to emerge, as “sysadmin types” could develop simple GUIs much faster and cheaper than if they had been forced to learn C/C++. The failure of established companies to capitalise on this is entirely their fault; for example Maemo/Meego refused to let Python apps on the Nokia store, and never even tried to push PyQt as their mobile story (which would have predated the Swift/Kotlin moves by almost a decade, giving them a fighting chance to get some developer mindshare).

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

#248

Post by wiz21c »

Klonoar wrote: post #94
wiz21c wrote: post #39

HTML/CSS is nice to display information. Now if you have to input data, then HTML/FORMS/etc. are not that good...

This is... very far from the truth. HTML Forms suck until you have to write form classes/UI in native languages, and then realize how annoying it is when you need to customize something or want a unique input that might make said form easier to deal with. e.g, NSTextField in Cocoa _still uses cells_ behind the scenes.

Ah... My experience differs :-) For example, many keyboard shortcuts don't work over tables (because they conflict with those from the browser; maybe Electron helps here, don't know); copy/pasting images is not easy; editing complex data structures is not easy, especially when you want to transmit delta-edits to the server; it's also tough to freely draw over controls (for example to give visual hints here and there).

But well, Qt presentation is not nearly as sexy as HTML/CSS, that's for sure.

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

#249

Post by oblio »

yorwba wrote: post #218
notRUSTY wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust has been harder for me to pickup than C++. I want to like it. The problem is that the one character symbolic syntax notation remain nonsensical and seem arbitrary to me.

What exactly do you mean by "one character symbolic syntax notation"? I can't think of anything in Rust matching that description that doesn't exist in C++ as well.

I'm guessing its this:

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-wiki-backup/blob/master/Si... ->

> (eg &'a T)

If you look at the popular web development languages, they don't really have sigils. Javascript/Flow/Typescript/Coffeescript (front end). Java, C#, Python, PHP (ok, I'll grant you $). Ruby is a bit of an oddball and I guess it's part of the reason Python is overtaking it.

Basically, unless you've been working in C/C++, you've never really used funky symbols to denote "modifiers".

Say what you will, but

> public static void main

is easier to Google and even to parse for most people.

Keep in mind that the vaaaaaast majority of devs today have never worked professionally in C/C++. I'd imagine some of them have never even touched it, even as a hobby.

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

#250

Post by oblio »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #225
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.

Its 15 years older.

If I'm going to use a GUI toolkit, the last thing I want to hear is "it hasn't been updated/hasn't had a revamp in 15 years". I know it's just the site, but it doesn't inspire confidence.
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