[GRASS-dev] Discussing new GUI toolkit: v.pydigit

[Trevor Wiens]

On Tue, 30 May 2006 22:22:35 -0700
Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu> wrote:

> Jachym and others,
> 
> These look very nice. I don't know anything about programming in Python, but
> here is the impression I'm getting from the discussion. I'd like to bounce
> this off others potentially interested in contributing to the GUI to see if
> I'm misunderstanding.
> 
> The jury seems still out between the main contenders for a GUI: QT,
> wxWidgets, and GTK.
> 
> However, it seems that quite a few researchers are familiar with Python to
> some extent. With a few notable exceptions, many of the active contributors
> to GRASS development are researchers who know some programming rather than
> programmers. This means that there may be a reasonable large group of
> potential contributors with some expertise in Python.
> 
> There are Python interfaces/wrappers (whatever the correct term is) to all 3
> of the main GUI contender platorms. That is a GUI could be produced in
> either using relevant Python toolkits. I assume that someone who knew the
> 'guts' of one of these GUI tool kits could also work on the GUI without
> going through Python (correct?). Using Python will probably be slower than
> using one of these GUI platforms directly/natively. But this may not matter
> if the GUI sets on top of GRASS C modules, maintaining the current modular
> architecture that nearly everyone responding appears to like.

I think this is an important point. Once a toolkit is chosen and if
things are written in a modular fashion, we may find that that for
certain modules, more speed is needed than can be provided in a Python
module (like v.pydigit). In this case, the work in prototyping the
function in Python first is not wasted. The application could still be
made to appear visually consistent and behave consistently, so the end
user would be unaffected.

An example might be, if we set user key bindings for the cartographic
front end, it would be nice for those to be honoured by the digitizing
tool.

T
-- 
Trevor Wiens 
twiens at interbaun.com

The significant problems that we face cannot be solved at the same 
level of thinking we were at when we created them. 
(Albert Einstein)