[prog] Cross platform Python GUIs

[Michael Bentley]

On May 16, 2007, at 4:08 AM, Mary Gardiner wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I have a little Python script which I'd like to share with the world.
> I'd like to add a small GUI to it, ideally to work under as many of
> Linux, Windows and MacOS as it can.
>
> What are people's preferred GUI libraries for cross-platform  
> Python? And
> how do you distribute the code?

The easiest cross-platform GUI to use is Tkinter.  If you use Tkinter  
(which is bundled with python), you can just distribute the python  
code -- and python is pre-installed on the Mac and most Linux  
distributions, so only Windows users would potentially even need to  
install Python.

If you want to build installable packages, use py2app on the Mac and  
py2exe on Windows.  I've not used it, but I think cx_freeze will  
build a Linux executable.

Another nice cross-platform GUI for Python is wxPython.  Not quite as  
nice on OS X as on the other systems, but still it's OK.  Other  
popular options are PyQt and PyGTK, but both of those are problematic  
on the Mac (the nicest Mac-only GUI is PyObjC).

Hope this helps,
Michael

---
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it.
                                             -Albert Einstein