GUI Programming with Python—The Road Ahead

Transcript

1. The Future of GUI Programming with Python

2. Me • Call me TP • Follow @uranusjr • https://uranusjr.com

3. None
4. None

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

9. None

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
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35. ……

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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”
43. None

44. Python Issue #23670 Modifications to support iOS as a cross-compilation

    target
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46. ?

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50. Recap • What we have is not good enough •

    Proposed solution • Python on mobile OSs

51. WHAT IF I AM INTERESTED IN SOMETHING ELSE?