More thoughts on DAOC MapperGUI revision...

[dragoness_e]

One other candidate for a 'more capable' cross-platform GUI package is Tix.  The Python interface comes as a standard part of the Python library, but you have to install the Tix shared libs yourself.   One pro, one con.  It's an extension to Tk (and thus TkInter), so uses the same methodology as the existing MapperGUI controls. Another pro. However, it doesn't offer that many more new controls; notably, no help subsystem or HTML/RTF browser that I could use to build one. Another con.  Finally, Tix is as slow as mud on Windows Python... maybe it's that 'interpreted code invoking another interpreter to interpret code' thing. Another big con.

So..

• Qt + PyQt:  Fast (if Kort's Spellcrafter is any indication), but working Windows version hard to get hold of.  I haven't gotten newer versions to run succesfully on Windows 98.  Not a good choice for cross-platform use.
  
• WxPython: Fast, works on both Windows and Linux, very rich set of controls and widgets. May be somewhat complex to install; hopefully py2exe can help me package it all up into one installation package for end users. May be very complex for programmer to switch to--or not, as is structurally similar to MFC, which I have programmed with before.
  
• Tix: Slow, works on both Windows and Linux, small set of controls and widgets. Very complex to install, as requires re-compiling Tcl, Tk and Tix from source--there are NO binary distributions available.  Only feasible on Windows side if py2exe can package up all the necessaries for end users.  Structurally similar to TkInter, which is already used in MapperGUI--but I'm not that familiar with it.
  

As you may have guessed, so far I'm leaning toward WxPython for cross-platform use.