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<div class="section" id="graphic-user-interface-faq">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id1">Graphic User Interface FAQ</a><a class="headerlink" href="#graphic-user-interface-faq" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<div class="contents topic" id="contents">
<p class="topic-title first">Contents</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#graphic-user-interface-faq" id="id1">Graphic User Interface FAQ</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#general-gui-questions" id="id2">General GUI Questions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#what-platform-independent-gui-toolkits-exist-for-python" id="id3">What platform-independent GUI toolkits exist for Python?</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#tkinter" id="id4">Tkinter</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#wxwidgets" id="id5">wxWidgets</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#qt" id="id6">Qt</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#gtk" id="id7">Gtk+</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#fltk" id="id8">FLTK</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#fox" id="id9">FOX</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#opengl" id="id10">OpenGL</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#what-platform-specific-gui-toolkits-exist-for-python" id="id11">What platform-specific GUI toolkits exist for Python?</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#tkinter-questions" id="id12">Tkinter questions</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#how-do-i-freeze-tkinter-applications" id="id13">How do I freeze Tkinter applications?</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#can-i-have-tk-events-handled-while-waiting-for-i-o" id="id14">Can I have Tk events handled while waiting for I/O?</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#i-can-t-get-key-bindings-to-work-in-tkinter-why" id="id15">I can’t get key bindings to work in Tkinter: why?</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="general-gui-questions">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id2">General GUI Questions</a><a class="headerlink" href="#general-gui-questions" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
</div>
<div class="section" id="what-platform-independent-gui-toolkits-exist-for-python">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id3">What platform-independent GUI toolkits exist for Python?</a><a class="headerlink" href="#what-platform-independent-gui-toolkits-exist-for-python" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Depending on what platform(s) you are aiming at, there are several. Some
of them haven’t been ported to Python 3 yet. At least <a class="reference internal" href="#tkinter">Tkinter</a> and <a class="reference internal" href="#qt">Qt</a>
are known to be Python 3-compatible.</p>
<div class="section" id="tkinter">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4">Tkinter</a><a class="headerlink" href="#tkinter" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Standard builds of Python include an object-oriented interface to the Tcl/Tk
widget set, called <a class="reference internal" href="../library/tk.html#tkinter"><em>tkinter</em></a>. This is probably the easiest to
install (since it comes included with most
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.python.org/download/">binary distributions</a> of Python) and use.
For more info about Tk, including pointers to the source, see the
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.tcl.tk">Tcl/Tk home page</a>. Tcl/Tk is fully portable to the
MacOS, Windows, and Unix platforms.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="wxwidgets">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5">wxWidgets</a><a class="headerlink" href="#wxwidgets" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>wxWidgets (<a class="reference external" href="http://www.wxwidgets.org">http://www.wxwidgets.org</a>) is a free, portable GUI class
library written in C++ that provides a native look and feel on a
number of platforms, with Windows, MacOS X, GTK, X11, all listed as
current stable targets. Language bindings are available for a number
of languages including Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.</p>
<p>wxPython (<a class="reference external" href="http://www.wxpython.org">http://www.wxpython.org</a>) is the Python binding for
wxwidgets. While it often lags slightly behind the official wxWidgets
releases, it also offers a number of features via pure Python
extensions that are not available in other language bindings. There
is an active wxPython user and developer community.</p>
<p>Both wxWidgets and wxPython are free, open source, software with
permissive licences that allow their use in commercial products as
well as in freeware or shareware.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="qt">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6">Qt</a><a class="headerlink" href="#qt" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>There are bindings available for the Qt toolkit (using either <a class="reference external" href="http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/">PyQt</a> or <a class="reference external" href="http://www.pyside.org/">PySide</a>) and for KDE (<a class="reference external" href="http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pykde/intro">PyKDE</a>).
PyQt is currently more mature than PySide, but you must buy a PyQt license from
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/license">Riverbank Computing</a>
if you want to write proprietary applications. PySide is free for all applications.</p>
<p>Qt 4.5 upwards is licensed under the LGPL license; also, commercial licenses
are available from <a class="reference external" href="http://qt.nokia.com/">Nokia</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="gtk">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7">Gtk+</a><a class="headerlink" href="#gtk" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>PyGtk bindings for the <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gtk.org">Gtk+ toolkit</a> have been
implemented by James Henstridge; see <<a class="reference external" href="http://www.pygtk.org">http://www.pygtk.org</a>>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="fltk">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8">FLTK</a><a class="headerlink" href="#fltk" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Python bindings for <a class="reference external" href="http://www.fltk.org">the FLTK toolkit</a>, a simple yet
powerful and mature cross-platform windowing system, are available from <a class="reference external" href="http://pyfltk.sourceforge.net">the
PyFLTK project</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="fox">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9">FOX</a><a class="headerlink" href="#fox" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>A wrapper for <a class="reference external" href="http://www.fox-toolkit.org/">the FOX toolkit</a> called <a class="reference external" href="http://fxpy.sourceforge.net/">FXpy</a> is available. FOX supports both Unix variants
and Windows.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="opengl">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10">OpenGL</a><a class="headerlink" href="#opengl" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>For OpenGL bindings, see <a class="reference external" href="http://pyopengl.sourceforge.net">PyOpenGL</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="what-platform-specific-gui-toolkits-exist-for-python">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id11">What platform-specific GUI toolkits exist for Python?</a><a class="headerlink" href="#what-platform-specific-gui-toolkits-exist-for-python" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p><a class="reference external" href="http://python.org/download/mac">The Mac port</a> by Jack Jansen has a rich and
ever-growing set of modules that support the native Mac toolbox calls. The port
supports MacOS X’s Carbon libraries.</p>
<p>By installing the <a class="reference external" href="http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net">PyObjc Objective-C bridge</a>, Python programs can use MacOS X’s
Cocoa libraries. See the documentation that comes with the Mac port.</p>
<p><a class="reference internal" href="windows.html#windows-faq"><em>Pythonwin</em></a> by Mark Hammond includes an interface to the
Microsoft Foundation Classes and a Python programming environment
that’s written mostly in Python using the MFC classes.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="tkinter-questions">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id12">Tkinter questions</a><a class="headerlink" href="#tkinter-questions" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="how-do-i-freeze-tkinter-applications">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id13">How do I freeze Tkinter applications?</a><a class="headerlink" href="#how-do-i-freeze-tkinter-applications" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Freeze is a tool to create stand-alone applications. When freezing Tkinter
applications, the applications will not be truly stand-alone, as the application
will still need the Tcl and Tk libraries.</p>
<p>One solution is to ship the application with the Tcl and Tk libraries, and point
to them at run-time using the <span class="target" id="index-0"></span><tt class="xref std std-envvar docutils literal"><span class="pre">TCL_LIBRARY</span></tt> and <span class="target" id="index-1"></span><tt class="xref std std-envvar docutils literal"><span class="pre">TK_LIBRARY</span></tt>
environment variables.</p>
<p>To get truly stand-alone applications, the Tcl scripts that form the library
have to be integrated into the application as well. One tool supporting that is
SAM (stand-alone modules), which is part of the Tix distribution
(<a class="reference external" href="http://tix.sourceforge.net/">http://tix.sourceforge.net/</a>).</p>
<p>Build Tix with SAM enabled, perform the appropriate call to
<tt class="xref c c-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">Tclsam_init()</span></tt>, etc. inside Python’s
<tt class="file docutils literal"><span class="pre">Modules/tkappinit.c</span></tt>, and link with libtclsam and libtksam (you
might include the Tix libraries as well).</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="can-i-have-tk-events-handled-while-waiting-for-i-o">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id14">Can I have Tk events handled while waiting for I/O?</a><a class="headerlink" href="#can-i-have-tk-events-handled-while-waiting-for-i-o" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Yes, and you don’t even need threads! But you’ll have to restructure your I/O
code a bit. Tk has the equivalent of Xt’s <tt class="xref c c-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">XtAddInput()</span></tt> call, which allows you
to register a callback function which will be called from the Tk mainloop when
I/O is possible on a file descriptor. Here’s what you need:</p>
<div class="highlight-python3"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">Tkinter</span> <span class="k">import</span> <span class="n">tkinter</span>
<span class="n">tkinter</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">createfilehandler</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">file</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">mask</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">callback</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The file may be a Python file or socket object (actually, anything with a
fileno() method), or an integer file descriptor. The mask is one of the
constants tkinter.READABLE or tkinter.WRITABLE. The callback is called as
follows:</p>
<div class="highlight-python3"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">callback</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">file</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">mask</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>You must unregister the callback when you’re done, using</p>
<div class="highlight-python3"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">tkinter</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">deletefilehandler</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">file</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Note: since you don’t know <em>how many bytes</em> are available for reading, you can’t
use the Python file object’s read or readline methods, since these will insist
on reading a predefined number of bytes. For sockets, the <tt class="xref py py-meth docutils literal"><span class="pre">recv()</span></tt> or
<tt class="xref py py-meth docutils literal"><span class="pre">recvfrom()</span></tt> methods will work fine; for other files, use
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">os.read(file.fileno(),</span> <span class="pre">maxbytecount)</span></tt>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="i-can-t-get-key-bindings-to-work-in-tkinter-why">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id15">I can’t get key bindings to work in Tkinter: why?</a><a class="headerlink" href="#i-can-t-get-key-bindings-to-work-in-tkinter-why" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>An often-heard complaint is that event handlers bound to events with the
<tt class="xref py py-meth docutils literal"><span class="pre">bind()</span></tt> method don’t get handled even when the appropriate key is pressed.</p>
<p>The most common cause is that the widget to which the binding applies doesn’t
have “keyboard focus”. Check out the Tk documentation for the focus command.
Usually a widget is given the keyboard focus by clicking in it (but not for
labels; see the takefocus option).</p>
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<ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Graphic User Interface FAQ</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#general-gui-questions">General GUI Questions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#what-platform-independent-gui-toolkits-exist-for-python">What platform-independent GUI toolkits exist for Python?</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#what-platform-specific-gui-toolkits-exist-for-python">What platform-specific GUI toolkits exist for Python?</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#tkinter-questions">Tkinter questions</a></li>
</ul>
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