GUI Programming with Python—The Road Ahead

Talk given at PyCon APAC 2015 in Taipei, Taiwan.

Transcript

1. The Future of GUI Programming with Python
2. Me • Call me TP • Follow @uranusjr • https://uranusjr.com
5. http://macdown.uranusjr.com
6. www. .com
7. Terminology • User interacts with a program through a user interface (UI) • A UI based on images is a graphical user interface (GUI)
8. I want a GUI library that works. works
10. What I Want • Native UI and UX • Portability • Ease to deploy • Pythonic API
11. What We Have
12. Tkinter • “Python’s de-facto standard GUI” • Native nowhere • Themed Tk • Binding to Tcl/Tk • Lean, but may be lacking
13. Platform-specific • PyObjC on OS X (Cocoa) • Win32API on Windows • PyGObject on Gnome (GTK+) • Native UI/UX • Needs to deploy C binding • Very weird API
14. Special Interpreters • .NET via IronPython (Windows) • AWT/Swing via Jython • Weird API • Compatibility with other libraries
15. Binding to Third-party • PyQt and PySide to Qt • wxPython to wxWidgets • Works quite natively • Cross-platform application code • Weird API • Needs to deploy tons of things
16. “Let’s Build Everything” • Kivy and Pyglet • Cross-platform application code • Nice Pythonic API • Needs to deploy C binding • Not native (and they don’t care)
17. Solution UI/UX Portable API Deploy Tkinter Meh Platform-specific Meh Jython Meh Meh Third-party Bindings Kivy / Pyglet Meh
18. Licensing • GPL and LGPL • Source distribution • Static linking
19. So?
20. What I Want • Native UI and UX • Portability • Ease to deploy • Pythonic API
21. The Solution (IMO) • Dynamic binding to native GUI • CPython compatibility • No non-Python dependencies • Wrapper API on top
22. Native API Python API Wrapper Binding (in Python)
23. The Binding • Foreign function interface • libffi • ctypes • CFFI, anyone?
24. Native API Python API Wrapper ctypes
25. Native API Python API Wrapper GTK+ ctypes PyGObject
26. Native API Python API Wrapper ctypes
27. Native API C API (e.g. CoreFoundation) Python API Wrapper ctypes Objective-C API ctypes + wrapper
28. IUUQQZCFFPSHUPHB
29. How?
30. toga toga-win32 toga-cocoa toga-gtk … rubicon PyGObject ctypes Native GUI Library
31. toga toga-win32 toga-cocoa toga-gtk … rubicon PyGObject ctypes Native GUI Library
35. ……
37. Difficulties • API design • Platform knowledge • UI Layout
38. https://github.com/pybee/toga
39. WHAT IF I AM INTERESTED IN SOMETHING ELSE?
40. Did I hear mobile?
41. lwn.net/Articles/640625/ You might also want to read this.
42. Mobile Support • API availability • The Store • “Paradigm mismatch”
44. Python Issue #23670 Modifications to support iOS as a cross-compilation target
46. ?
50. Recap • What we have is not good enough • Proposed solution • Python on mobile OSs
51. WHAT IF I AM INTERESTED IN SOMETHING ELSE?