## Other Python GUIs

There are other GUI solutions out there for Python.

Tkinter

Tkinter is the defacto standard GUI for Python. It is available on nearly every platform that Python and Tcl/TK are. Why Tcl/Tk? Well because Tkinter is just a wrapper around Tcl's GUI toolkit, Tk. This has its upsides and its downsides...

The upside is that Tk is a pretty versatile toolkit. It can be made to do a lot of things in a lot of different environments. It is fairly easy to create new widgets and use them interchangeably in your programs.

The downside is Tcl. When using Tkinter you actually have two separate language interpreters running, the Python interpreter and the Tcl interpreter for the GUI. Since the guts of Tcl is mostly about string processing, it is fairly slow as well. (Not too bad on a fast Pentium II, but you really notice the difference on slower machines.)

It wasn't until the latest version of Tcl/Tk that native Look and Feel was possible on non-Motif platforms. This is because Tk usually implements its own widgets (controls) even when there are native controls available.

Tkinter is a pretty low-level toolkit. You have to do a lot of work (verbose program code) to do things that would be much simpler with a higher level of abstraction.

PythonWin

PythonWin is an add-on package for Python for the Win32 platform. It includes wrappers for MFC as well as much of the Win32 API. Because of its foundation, it is very familiar for programmers who have experience with MFC and the Win32 API. It is obviously not compatible with other platforms and toolkits. PythonWin is organized as separate packages and modules so you can use the pieces you need without having to use the GUI portions.

Others

There are quite a few other GUI modules available for Python, some in active use, some that haven't been updated for ages. Most are simple wrappers around some C or C++ toolkit or another, and most are not cross-platform compatible. See this link for a listing of a few of them.