loutish/lazy Debian/"testing" system here: ~> apt-cache search toga toga2 - computer chess engine, calculates chess moves (hm... wake me when it hits testing)
As a Python library, the package would be called python-toga.
Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
61–70 of 72 posts
Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#62I was really confused when I read "the constrain() call takes expressions that define the relationships you want to impose" (emphasis mine) and saw this code: container.constrain(button.TOP == container.TOP + 50) Python doesn't let you pass expressions! Why isn't that just getting evaluated to true or false? Is this not vanilla Python? Is there a pre-processor? I dove into the code and found the answer here[1]. butto…
FWIW, I've seen the double-equals syntax in GSS as well. It's a common idiom in the constraint programming community; it's supposed to symbolize that the two sides change in sync -- container.TOP can change button.TOP or vice-versa.
I see your argument about overloaded operators being dangerous for newcomers, but the syntax isn't completely fabricated.
Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#63This project appears to be quite early stage (many missing APIs, no stable Windows support, poor documentation, etc) but very promising. If it had integration with a GUI designer and was feature complete, I'd start using it on projects. I've explored the options for Python GUI toolkits quite extensively. They're a real challenge to get running conveniently (by conveniently, I mean a simple PIP install away with no ex…
"No external C/C++ library dependencies" is simply impossible. Given that the host OS is not implemented in Python, some kind of bridge to its native libraries is necessary for a GUI library. Such libraries can be either compiled during the pip installation, or required as an external dependency installed using the package manager of the OS, Either way it's never going to be hassle free due to all the different OSes…
>"No external C/C++ library dependencies" is simply impossible. Given that the host OS is not implemented in Python, some kind of bridge to its native libraries is necessary for a GUI library.
Not true. Python provides facilities for dealing with dynamic link libraries from native Python code. These can be used to interface with the OS directly, without necessitating writing a C/C++ wrapper.
Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#64This toolkit seems extremely simple and user-friendly, might have to give it a try
Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#65For a project like this where there are many other potential options (wxPython etc.) the first question I'm thinking is 'why do I care about this new one'. I.e. What does this do better/differently/more conveniently. I assume the answer here us the native Python aspect and not needing big compiled libraries. Might be worth selling it a bit more on your homepage and making that advantage clearer? It may be that everyo…
Thanks for the feedback! I cover some of the "why" in the docs, but I agree the homepage could do a better job of making the case for a new UI toolkit. The short version: * System native widgets, not themes * Installable via "pip install" - no third party or binary dependencies * Not just naïve wrappers around widgets - capture the underlying use case and provide an API wrapper. * Genuinely Python native. This means…
wxPython has system native widgets in every platform. wxWidgets has system native widgets in every platform, and it is the only one I know that provides that.
May be you are thinking about some other toolkit that's not wxWidgets.
Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#66Does anyone know of any similar GUI toolkits, for languages other than Python? That is, cross-platform GUI toolkits that use true OS-native widgets, and ideally, also abstract away platform-specific details such as the placement of the Quit/Exit menu items and the order of OK/Cancel buttons. Toga is actually the first library with those features that I’ve heard of.
wxWidgets has been doing that for more than a decade.
Well, may be some very platform specific guidelines have to be added by hand, but the actual widgets used are native.
Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#67Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair point. The spacing and margins are totally wrong, for sure. But that's just spacing & margins, and I assume that's easily adjusted (and they should do that, so their demo doesn't look ugly). But nonetheless, the widgets are native Cocoa widgets, so they not only look native, they feel and behave native, something you can't say about Qt (at least not to the same degree — although I develop with Qt, love Qt, and h…
The spacing and margins are all manually specified (or, in the case of the example, aren't specified at all, so they default to 0). If you cared to do so, this spacing could be manually adjusted. Under the hood, it's 100% native widgets (i.e., on OSX, the code is actually instantiating an NSButton, adding it to an NSView, set as content on an NSWindow; on Ubuntu, it uses Gtk.Button etc), so the look and feel of the w…
"100% native widgets" is the easy part and wxWidgets/wxPython is doing just that (and always have been). Providing higher-level API is harder and again, wx does that too.
But the devil is in the detail. The reason why many wx apps don't look very well on OS X is because getting all the tiny details like spacing, behavior, layout etc. right for all supported platforms, with (mostly) same code base is hard - and it has nothing to do with the look of individual widgets.
But well, you'll learn that during the journey ;)
Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
"No external C/C++ library dependencies" is simply impossible. Given that the host OS is not implemented in Python, some kind of bridge to its native libraries is necessary for a GUI library. Such libraries can be either compiled during the pip installation, or required as an external dependency installed using the package manager of the OS, Either way it's never going to be hassle free due to all the different OSes…
>"No external C/C++ library dependencies" is simply impossible. Given that the host OS is not implemented in Python, some kind of bridge to its native libraries is necessary for a GUI library. Not true. Python provides facilities for dealing with dynamic link libraries from native Python code. These can be used to interface with the OS directly, without necessitating writing a C/C++ wrapper.
OK then it's a terminological confusion, because I would say that gives you a dependency on said "dynamic link libraries". Whether you need to write a C/C++ wrapper only determines if the dependency is in runtime or also compile time.
Re: Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkit
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"No external C/C++ library dependencies" is simply impossible. Given that the host OS is not implemented in Python, some kind of bridge to its native libraries is necessary for a GUI library. Not true. Python provides facilities for dealing with dynamic link libraries from native Python code. These can be used to interface with the OS directly, without necessitating writing a C/C++ wrapper.
OK then it's a terminological confusion, because I would say that gives you a dependency on said "dynamic link libraries". Whether you need to write a C/C++ wrapper only determines if the dependency is in runtime or also compile time.
You have zero dependencies aside from the OS.