Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Python GUIs

pythonguis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–98 of 98 posts

Re: Python GUIs

#91

Post by fud101 »

037 wrote: post #54
maho wrote: post #40

I love gooey: https://github.com/chriskiehl/Gooey It allows me to quickly slap a GUI on an existing script that accepts command-line-arguments. In the end, I get the best of both world: Discoverability from the GUI, automation through the script, and automatic feature parity between the two. Downside: Control over the GUI layout is basic, and only "standard" GUI features work, but I never felt limited when using it.

+1 for Gooey. This "auto-GUI" app is a godsend for any script-user seeking to minimize friction. Lately, I've been diving into Ruby (fallen in love with Ruby on Rails) and I'm hoping to come across something similar.

Dope

Re: Python GUIs

#92

Post by justinmayer »

A interesting option I haven’t seen mentioned here is Beeware, an open-source (MIT) project with this summary:

“Write your apps in Python and release them on iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, Web, and tvOS using rich, native user interfaces. Multiple apps, one codebase, with a fully native user experience on every platform.”

Source: https://beeware.org>

Re: Python GUIs

#93

Post by UnnoTed »

brainbag wrote: post #86
BlackLotus89 wrote: post #4

I sometimes miss the good old days of visual basic and delphi when I could create a gui that just worked in seconds, help pages via F1 and quick access to all events possible through simple gui clicks. A few days ago I tried getting a simple PyQtWebengine example working using pyqt6 and failed miserably. It was a frustrating experience for sure

I'm working on a project and have been thinking along the same lines. Are there any modern cross-platform tools any language that are good for building like the good old days?

I like to use GoVCL [0] as it provides the GUI of Lazarus [1] including drag-n-drop form designer but with Go as the main language.

GoVCL's author built a C library called liblcl [2] which is what GoVCL uses to control the GUI, so if you know C you can use it instead of Go.

I'm building a lightweight Steam chat client with GoVCL so that I don't need the official client that takes like 200-300mb ram just to show text [3].

[0]: https://github.com/ying32/govcl

[1]: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[2]: https://github.com/ying32/liblcl/blob/master/README.en-US.md

[3]: https://files.catbox.moe/c4lzxb.png

Re: Python GUIs

#94

Post by yboris »

thunky wrote: post #73
Waterluvian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web devs: they’re all clueless, they’re all lesser, but for the life of me I just can’t seem to make the UI I want and by gum it’s all their fault.

I think the problem is that devs believe they need to create a unique snowflake app every time, each with it's own special sauce. Visual basic was different because there was only one way to create a button, so no way to over engineer a new button component. All apps looked the same and nobody cared.

"The problem" might be that people in this thread and others get frustrated because others have different goals than them.

Of course Electron is overkill for a single-button application. But Visual Basic is absolutely going to be a headache if you want a custom GUI.

Pick the tool that's right for the job!

I build this with Electron: https://videohubapp.com/ Good luck having infinite scroll in a gallery that is butter-smooth using something else (that also doesn't require months of learning new tools) and is cross-platform(!!!).

Re: Python GUIs

#95

Post by atomize »

I've been coming in and out of the Python ecosystem for years as it isn't my primary tool but often is a piece of a project or something along those lines. Is it just my limited exposure, or is there a sort of stagnated, low-key 'GUI lib cold-war' going on in the Python space?

Many libraries, and framework-type things seem to have come and gone, while none have really 'taken hold', so to say. Is this the case? And, specifically, what is the big hurdle to a widely accepted GUI library in Python?

Re: Python GUIs

#96

Post by spapas82 »

ptx wrote: post #87
spapas82 wrote: post #34

I think that tkinter is "good enough" for most cases that need a GUI in pythonb these days (for more complex stuff you'd better go with either a web app or a compiled language that creates normal desktop apps). As a showcase I've built two simple utils with python and tk (and pyinstaller): - https://github.com/spapas/pdfmerger a simple tool to merge pdfs into one - https://github.com/spapas/pomo ; a simple pomodoro t…

The pomodoro example seems to be updating the UI from a background thread. The TkDocs tutorial [1] advices against this and suggests posting a custom event to the main thread instead. Using the after or after_idle methods [2] to post a callback to the main thread also works, and seems easier to me since it allows you to pass arguments. In this particular example, where the background thread is just used as a timer, y…

Thank you for the suggestion I'll update my code to use after instead!

Re: Python GUIs

#97

Post by elevation »

distantsounds wrote: post #63
BlackLotus89 wrote: post #4

I sometimes miss the good old days of visual basic and delphi when I could create a gui that just worked in seconds, help pages via F1 and quick access to all events possible through simple gui clicks. A few days ago I tried getting a simple PyQtWebengine example working using pyqt6 and failed miserably. It was a frustrating experience for sure

This is a constant ask every time a thread about desktop UI design comes up. Everyone wants a new Visual Basic, nobody wants to use the alternatives. The VB language itself likely doesn't appeal to people nowadays but the building blocks the UI provided is still unparalleled and everyone has fond memories of how easy prototyping applications is with it.

1990s PC economics produced Visual Basic. Microsoft was able to write off the development cost of the Visual Studio suite as an investment in the further entrenchment of Windows -- something no third party devtools company could directly profit from. So VB was designed to be the lowest of the low friction paths to developing software that locked users and businesses into win32. The single platform focus (supporting other platforms would have defeated the purpose) also helped keep the IDE lean and speedy.

Former VB devs pine for the usability and speed they once enjoyed. But most tech ecosystems that are self-contained enough to benefit from focused/lightweight devtools can't support a player large enough to develop them. And the ecosystems that are big enough are managed by megacorps that are more interested in brokering consumer data than streamlining the developer experience. I too would love to see a renaissance of RAD but I can't figure out who would pay for it.

Re: Python GUIs

#98

Post by marssaxman »

thunky wrote: post #73
Waterluvian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web devs: they’re all clueless, they’re all lesser, but for the life of me I just can’t seem to make the UI I want and by gum it’s all their fault.

I think the problem is that devs believe they need to create a unique snowflake app every time, each with it's own special sauce. Visual basic was different because there was only one way to create a button, so no way to over engineer a new button component. All apps looked the same and nobody cared.

> All apps looked the same and nobody cared

We actually cared a lot, just in the opposite direction - apps which didn't look the same were weird and bad.

Post reply on HN