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Ask YC: What should I use for front end GUI development?

2 points by vineet7kumar ↗ HN
Though I have worked on compilers using C, I haven't done any GUI programming before. Currently I am working on a project that will require some nice looking front end GUI. I am looking for a tool to develop platform independent GUI. The project will also have some web interaction. What language and library will you suggest for this. I have heard about python and tknter.

5 comments

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gaius
Tcl/Tk get sneered at by people who have never used it, but it is an incredibly productive environment if you need a GUI to drive a C program, especially with the new style widgets (ttk). Check out www.tkdocs.com. The downside is that Tcl isn't to everyone's taste. It has improved a lot with version 8.5 (e.g. tcl::mathop is much nicer than expr). Tcl can be made to behave a lot like LISP - you can add new control structures to the language, eval code, etc etc. See wiki.tcl.tk for more details.

If you are set on using Python, you could do a lot worse than wxPython. It is much more like "traditional" GUI programming (e.g. if you have done Motif you will pick it up straight away). You can also get at wx from C++ if that's your bag.

vineet7kumar
Is it easy to learn Tcl/Tk as a C hacker? Also can I design beautiful looking widgets with it? I mean like things that can be done with DHTML for a browser ?

I liked Enso's interface ... can that type of interface be designed using Tcl/Tk ?

gaius
1) Tcl/Tk is very very easy to learn (and to embed in C applications)

2) I've never implemented my own widgets but plenty of people have, check out BLT as an example

3) I don't know what Enso is I'm afraid.

vineet7kumar
OOPS I forgot to give the link. It is a startup by Aza Raskin and his friends. The link is http://www.humanized.com Even if you don't use it do check out the demo. It's nice.