I'm creating a Disk Analyzer in Linux. I would like to know which Python toolkit will help me with the GUI. I'm currently trying Tkinter is there something better?
"Better" is subjective. I will gladly offer my opinion that there is no toolkit better than Tkinter for this task. This task seemingly doesn't need much eye candy or the ability to print, which are Tkinter's weak points. Tkinter is easy to use, modern, stable, and very customizable. Plus, you probably already have it. It has a canvas widget that is incredibly easy to use if you are considering drawing heat maps or charts or graphs or whatever.
Others will no doubt say "no way! wxPython is better because...", or "no way! pyqt is better because...". And frankly, we're all right. They are all fine toolkits. For what you are doing I would argue that the toolkit doesn't matter. Pick any toolkit and use it.
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How do I get started with building software like billing software or invoice maker. I made them
with tkinter but I want them in attractive modern GUI . I don't want them to be web based.
if its not possible with python I can learn other way too. but I don't know how.
I had a very similar issues regarding the aesthetic of a GUI. Perhaps have a look at a good few examples of GUI framework programs here:
https://www.digitaldesignjournal.com/python-gui-framework/
Although they are Tkinter based and probably the same structure overall. It might be a good option for your needs, as I understand.
Please also note that the limitations of GUI aesthetic is also limited in plain tkinter as far as I am concerned.
You can also have a look at tkinter.ttk as follows:
https://www.pythontutorial.net/tkinter/ttk-style/
I have played around a lot with the ttk attributes and it might be a good option to investigate. I find that python is a much easier language to adapt to rather than learn another language solemnly for better GUI aesthetic. (Although important)
I trust that this will help.
I would recommend PyQt. Personally, I find that applications made with PyQt generally have a modern feel. Below you can se an example application I found on a PyQt tutorial:
I've decided to start working on a personal project, attempting to develop a cross platform, MSPaint like app. Oddly enough, I find mspaint is one of the applications I miss the most on Linux or OS X, so I want to try to make something similar. Tuxpaint, mtpaint, gpaint, etc. are all old and inactive and ugly. I don't want to make GIMP, just the basics, similar in features to MS Paint.
I'm thinking of doing it in python with the pygtk toolkit, but I was interested to hear your suggestions. Would C/C++ be a better choice, or even C# (gasp!) with mono? How about using Qt as opposed to GTK, or maybe some other fancy library I don't know about (Please, not FLTK!). I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
Thanks!
Qt's canvas object (or its newer replacement QGraphicsView) can do pretty cool things. Whether you choose C++ or python is a matter of personal choice, as Qt is supported in both languages. For a simple project like this I'd choose python because killer performance is not much of an issue, and it will be much easier to write.
Another thing to look into is making this app web based with HTML5's canvas object and Javascript. It can be surprisingly robust, and anything that can be put on the cloud is a win in most cases.
If you decide to go with Python (which would be my choice because it's such a simple language), then TkInter is considered the de-facto standard GUI package. That link should send you to some excellent starting references for TkInter, although I also really like Not_a_Golfer's suggestion of an HTML5 web-app.
Short: You can use both, no third party library is guaranteed to be distributed with all major distributions.
Long:
Gtk+ vs. Qt
What do you want incorporate into your application. If it is just selecting a brush, selecting color you could pretty much use any gui toolkit.
If you are going to run it as a web-based tool, Gtk+ has an html5 backend renderer (I don't know about Qt)
A sidenote:
I recommend to use the toolkit's native programming language (gtk+ C, Qt C++) - if you don't, you will suffer from delays with bugfixes, generally more bugs and delayed releases, though for that case it shouldn't really matter.
Everything else boils down to personal preferences and there already exist some questions to tackling that issue.
if you are using qt,you can use QtitanRibbon
We are in the process of standing up a UI on top of a python system. This is all throw away code, so we want something quick, yet presentable.
We will have a couple of "interfaces" but they will be of two types. One will be control, it will basically be sitting on top of a python thread, and accepting requests from the user.
The other will be more of a display screen that will need to be able to display images, and some classic "grid views" of text to the user.
We pretty much know we could* do all of this in HTML but wasn't sure what would be the best way to interact with the core python code?
Anyone know of a good UI python presentation layer? Since we know we can do all of this in HTML/Jquery pretty quickly, we are also open to suggestions on how to integrate this with a web server..
Any suggestions? Really interested in finding out if there is any way to use python as the back end to a webserver.
Let me know if you all need more information.
I like wxPython. The demo application is excellent and lets you browse, tweak and re-run the code right in the demo.
We have found the DJango meets our needs. It is a pretty slick mvc style python web stack. Really is easy to use, and very quick to develop in. I will say that the ORM layer is a little young so it is hard to do some simple queries, but luckly since this is throw away code we can just use native sql.
Tkinter is probably going to be the solution you can use quickest. Its API is simple and straight-forward, and you probably already have it installed.
As the other 2 classic Python GUI options have been given already, I feel duty bound to suggest PyQt :)
Using QT Designer I've found it much simpler than TKInter to get some basic GUIs up and running. Build your GUI up in a WYSIWYG way, then hook it up to the back-end logic. I've also found that the large amount of C++ help on QT available on the interent usually translates more or less directly across to PyQt. The resources available for TKInter are IMO pretty obtuse, and simply stop as soon as you want to do anything more interesting than Hello World. YMMV.
The Rapid GUI Programming with Python and QT book is a fantastic resource. Had me programming real applications in no time.
I am not sure if my question title makes sense to you or not. I am seeing many cool applications which have cool animations/effects. I would like to learn how to use python to create this kind of GUI applications under Linux.
"cool animation/effects" like 3D wall in Cooliris which is written in flash and compiz effects with opengl.
I also heard of some python GUI library like wxPython and pyQT. Since I am completely new to python GUI programming, can anyone suggest me where to start and what I should learn to achieve and create such application? maybe learn pyQT with openGL feature? pyopengl binding? I have no clue on where to start. thank you very much for your time and suggestion.
By the way, in case if someone need to know which kind of application I am going to create, well, just any kind of applications. maybe photo explorer with 3D wall, maybe IM client, maybe facebook client etc...
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Languages/Python
Many KDE styles use SVG and plenty of animation. The user can always change themes. I think you should be more specific about what kind of animations you want to do. I don't think 3D wall type affects really fall into the widget category that QT is. It sounds to me like you want to make a 3D interface for an application. If that is the case, you may want to look more into 3D engine type libraries used mainly in games. I know that some have excellent GUI widgets for programming game menus and the like. I guess you'd decide on your engine and the see if there are python language bindings. One of my favorite engines: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/links.html
Another thing you would want to consider is how you want to handle the window management. Do you want to make a full screen interface? Or is to to be windowed? Also how would such an application integrate into a 3D window manager or rather a window manager with compositing.
Edit:
In that case the qtopengl module is probably something to look into: http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.6/qtopengl.html
I do recommend QT. It's clean and easy to use and cross platform. So your app could run on windows as well.
One thing you'd want to think about before hand is the type of FX you want to perform. For example, if you want to create a page curl type effect when renaming the image, you'd have to think about how to program that, or look for libraries/code snipets that do that math. 3D engines that are used in games often have a lot of support for those kind of typical FX or animations that you'd see in a game. If you use something like qtopengl, you'd need to think about this as well. qtopengl can pretty much only render. Think of it as a viewport. However, it is the correct approach to making a 3D application for the desktop.
Programming 3D applications is really interesting and fun. I enjoyed it a lot. However, don't get discouraged be the math. I recommend getting a book about it if you are serious. I liked this one: http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Graphics-Development-Wordware-Library/dp/1556229119
However, IIRC the examples are C++ which you may not be comfortable with. When you understand such mathematical concepts, it easier to think about how you would make a page curl type affect. Of course, if you find libraries or code that shows you how to do the math, that may be fine.
May be, just create a GUI and all effects will make compiz?
Anyway, as I know QT have ability to use openGL.
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.1/examples.html#opengl-examples
I want to develop a very simple 2D game in Python. Pygame is the most popular library for game development in Python, but I'm already quite familiar with wxPython and feel comfortable using it. I've even written a Tetris clone in it, and it was pretty smooth.
I wonder, what does Pygame offer in terms of graphics (leaving sound aside, for a moment) that wxPython can't do ? Is it somehow simpler/faster to do graphics in Pygame than in wxPython ? Is it even more cross-platform ?
It looks like I'm missing something here, but I don't know what.
Well, in theory there is nothing you can do with Pygame that you can't with wxPython. The point is not what but how. In my opinion, it's easier to write a game with PyGame becasue:
It's faster. Pygame is based on SDL which is a C library specifically designed for games, it has been developed with speed in mind. When you develop games, you need speed.
Is a game library, not a general purpose canvas, It has classes and functions useful for sprites, transformations, input handling, drawing, collision detection. It also implements algorithms and techniques often used in games like dirty rectangles, page flipping, etc.
There are thousands of games and examples made with it. It will be easier for you to discover how to do any trick.
There are a lot of libraries with effects and utilities you could reuse. You want an isometric game, there is a library, you want a physics engine, there is a library, you what some cool visual effect, there is a library.
PyWeek. :) This is to make the development of your game even funnier!
For some very simple games like Tetris, the difference won't be too much, but if you want to develop a fairly complex game, believe me, you will want something like PyGame.
wxPython is based on wxWidgets which is a GUI-oriented toolkit. It has the advantage of using the styles and decorations provided by the system it runs on and thus it is very easy to write portable applications that integrate nicely into the look and feel of whatever you're running. You want a checkbox? Use wxCheckBox and wxPython will handle looks and interaction.
pyGame, on the other hand, is oriented towards game development and thus brings you closer to the hardware in ways wxPython doesn't (and doesn't need to, since it calls the OS for drawing most of its controls). pyGame has lots of game related stuff like collision detection, fine-grained control of surfaces and layers or flipping display buffers at a time of your choosing.
That said, graphics-wise you can probably always find a way to do what you want with both toolkits. However, when speed counts or you wish to implement graphically more taxing game ideas than Tetris, you're probably better off with pyGame. If you want to use lots of GUI elements and don't need the fancy graphics and sound functions, you're better off with wxPython.
Portability is not an issue. Both are available for the big three (Linux, OSX, Windows).
It's more a question of what kind of special capabilities you need, really.