up with PyGUI!

[Zooko O'Whielacronx]

I'm a fan of Greg Ewing's PyGUI [1]. I used it to code a simple game
for my son [2], and enjoyed it. Programming with wxPython feels like
programming with a C++ tool that has been wrapped in Python.
Programming with PyGUI feels like programming with a real Python tool.

If you're developing a commercial application in Python, wxPython is
currently the only option that offers native widgets on w32. It would
be a boost for Python if PyGUI got a native w32 backend.

Therefore, I offer the following suggestions:

Python programmers: use PyGUI! It's nice. Contribute bug reports and
so forth.

Python developers: Is it too early to include PyGUI in the standard
library? It seems stable to me.

PSF: If anyone applies for a grant [3] to put a proper w32 backend into
PyGUI, please give them money. I would offer to do that job myself,
but (a) I'm not w32 expert and (b) I'm busy trying to make one of those
aforementioned commercial apps.

Thanks,

Zooko, Journeyman Hacker

[1] http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python_gui/
[2] http://zooko.com/log-2004.html#d2004-06-23
[3] http://python.org/psf/call-2004.html

[Jorge Godoy]

"Zooko O'Whielacronx" <zo***@zooko.com> writes:

If you're developing a commercial application in Python, wxPython is
currently the only option that offers native widgets on w32. It would
be a boost for Python if PyGUI got a native w32 backend.

Indeed... But first, I'm curious about how it looks. I don't
understand why people make GUI projects without any screenshot available
on their own website. How can we see how it looks without downloading,
it?
BTW, I got really interested on the tool used to draw the diagrams on
this page:
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~gr...ownership.html

Be seeing you,
--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[pitkali]

Jorge Godoy wrote:

Indeed... But first, I'm curious about how it looks. I don't
understand why people make GUI projects without any screenshot available
on their own website. How can we see how it looks without downloading,
it?

It says explicitly what toolkits are used. Don't you know how gtk2 looks
like?

Regards,

--
* Piotr (pitkali) Kalinowski * mailto: pitkali (at) o2 (dot) pl *
* Registered Linux User No. 282090 * Powered by Gentoo Linux *
* Fingerprint: D5BB 27C7 9993 50BB A1D2 33F5 961E FE1E D049 4FCD *

[Phil Frost]

I don't know exactly what was used, but I have used dia to make such
things before.

On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 02:24:02PM -0300, Jorge Godoy wrote:

[...]

BTW, I got really interested on the tool used to draw the diagrams on
this page:
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~gr...ownership.html

[Jorge Godoy]

pitkali <pi*****@NOSPAMinteria.pl> writes:

Jorge Godoy wrote:

Indeed... But first, I'm curious about how it looks. I don't
understand why people make GUI projects without any screenshot available
on their own website. How can we see how it looks without downloading,
it?

It says explicitly what toolkits are used. Don't you know how gtk2 looks
like?

Yes, I do, but I don't know how it is supposed to look like from this
toolit perspective... If I wanted everything exactly like GTK2, I'd
probably use it.

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Skip Montanaro]

Jorge> Indeed... But first, I'm curious about how it looks. I don't
Jorge> understand why people make GUI projects without any screenshot
Jorge> available on their own website. How can we see how it looks
Jorge> without downloading, it?

On Unix and Windows it looks like any GTK app. On MacOSX I presume (haven't
tried it there yet) it looks like any other Mac app.

Skip

[Skip Montanaro]

Jorge> Yes, I do, but I don't know how it is supposed to look like from
Jorge> this toolit perspective... If I wanted everything exactly like
Jorge> GTK2, I'd probably use it.

That's not what PyGUI is about. It's about a better, standard API for
creating GUI apps.

Skip

[Alex Martelli]

Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:
...

It says explicitly what toolkits are used. Don't you know how gtk2 looks
like?

Yes, I do, but I don't know how it is supposed to look like from this
toolit perspective... If I wanted everything exactly like GTK2, I'd
probably use it.

....and then it would look the same on a Mac, instead of a nice Aqua
lool, right...?

It seems to me that the point of PyGUI is ease of programming, rather
than look-and-feel, which are supposed to be native on each platform
(except no native win32 is supported yet, as far as I understand).
Alex

[Hans Nowak]

Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:

I'm a fan of Greg Ewing's PyGUI [1]. I used it to code a simple game
for my son [2], and enjoyed it. Programming with wxPython feels like
programming with a C++ tool that has been wrapped in Python.

This problem is addressed by Wax:

http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/dope_on_wax.html
http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/wax_primer.html
http://zephyrfalcon.org/moin.cgi/Wax
http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/wax_file_explorer.html

(Sorry, no real homepage is available yet for Wax.)

--
Hans Nowak (ha**@zephyrfalcon.org)
http://zephyrfalcon.org/

[Jorge Godoy]

al*****@yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:
...

> It says explicitly what toolkits are used. Don't you know how gtk2 looks
> like?

Yes, I do, but I don't know how it is supposed to look like from this
toolit perspective... If I wanted everything exactly like GTK2, I'd
probably use it.

...and then it would look the same on a Mac, instead of a nice Aqua
lool, right...?

It seems to me that the point of PyGUI is ease of programming, rather
than look-and-feel, which are supposed to be native on each platform
(except no native win32 is supported yet, as far as I understand).

This was the point when I asked for screenshots. ;-)

I was just answering to the "you know how GTK2 looks like" question.

Even with a nice description and with the used toolkits described, I see
no reason to not include a screenshot or at least an hiperlink to some
screenshots.

It is weird see a GUI project with no GUI screen in its description.

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Jorge Godoy]

Skip Montanaro <sk**@pobox.com> writes:

Jorge> Indeed... But first, I'm curious about how it looks. I don't
Jorge> understand why people make GUI projects without any screenshot
Jorge> available on their own website. How can we see how it looks
Jorge> without downloading, it?

On Unix and Windows it looks like any GTK app. On MacOSX I presume (haven't
tried it there yet) it looks like any other Mac app.

This is why I think screenshots are important: you wouldn't presume
nothing you would see if they do look like other Mac apps or not. That
was the point I raised on my first message.

And it accepts either GTK1 and GTK2? (I don't remember the description
right now... I'll look up in a while.) Does it accept GTK on Windows?
Or it doesn't run in Windows at all for now?

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Greg Ewing]

Jorge Godoy wrote:

Indeed... But first, I'm curious about how it looks. I don't
understand why people make GUI projects without any screenshot available
on their own website. How can we see how it looks without downloading,
it?
How it looks isn't the point of PyGUI. The point is what
the API is like, and you can see that from reading the
online docs.

There wouldn't be much to see in the screenshots anyway.
On a Mac it looks like anything else does on a Mac, and
on Linux or Windows it (currently) looks like anything
else that uses Gtk.
BTW, I got really interested on the tool used to draw the diagrams on
this page:
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python_gui/
version/Doc/ownership.html

As far as I can remember, I drew them with Appleworks 6,
printed them to PDF files, opened them with Preview and
then saved them as jpegs. (Photoshop might also have been
involved in there somewhere, I don't recall now.)

--
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg

[Greg Ewing]

Jorge Godoy wrote:

And it accepts either GTK1 and GTK2?
Only Gtk2.
Does it accept GTK on Windows?

Yes, as far as I know. I haven't tested it myself,
but I don't know of any reason it shouldn't work.

--
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg

[Michel Claveau - abstraction méta-galactique non t]

Hi !

(Sorry, no real homepage is available yet for Wax.)

I am sorry also, because wax is fun.
@-salutations
--
Michel Claveau

[Harald Massa]

Zooko

Python programmers: use PyGUI! It's nice. Contribute bug reports and
so forth.

as I understand from the website, it looks quite similiar to "anygui"

which was a very nice idea, that also ... kept being a nice idea.

I suspect that Frameworks have to be in active use AND development for at
least 4 years before considering them for the standard lib is of any use
for anybody.

Harald

[Fritz Bosch]

Greg Ewing <gr**@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
....

There wouldn't be much to see in the screenshots anyway.
On a Mac it looks like anything else does on a Mac, and
on Linux or Windows it (currently) looks like anything
else that uses Gtk.

Being built with PyGUI using Gtk using Gimp, does my
application become subject to the GPL?

Fritz

[Jorge Godoy]

Greg Ewing <gr**@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

How it looks isn't the point of PyGUI. The point is what
the API is like, and you can see that from reading the
online docs.
I liked the API. This is what led me to question how it looks. When
I'm developing something that is going to be "visual" to my clients, I'm
interested on what I'm delivering them and how hard it is to achieve
that (how much code, how to tie things together, etc.). But if the
appearance is not good, it is better to choose another toolkit that
might not have an API as good the the other one or to write something
curses based... Appearance sells a lot, specially to Windows users.
Quality and clearity of code is important to us, developers, but if you
write ugly screens with beautiful code your product won't sell.
There wouldn't be much to see in the screenshots anyway.
On a Mac it looks like anything else does on a Mac, and
on Linux or Windows it (currently) looks like anything
else that uses Gtk.

I'm not familiar with the looks on Macs... But I remember something of
it, from the last visit to a store that has some of these here
(I remember specially the design of the computers, the look of the
applications seemed very interesting, but KDE is approaching it very
fast, IMHO). I really would like a lot if it was possible to write
non-GPL code with Qt (not that I'm against GPL software, but some
clients already give me problem with their software being written on
Python, imagine if I had to break too habits at once: closed
software with closed tools...).

On the other hand, GTK 2 is much better than GTK 1. They made a really
nice job. I use it with wxPython and the results are very good. But
then, I'm not a designer... I may just compare with other languages and
other toolkit results.

BTW, I got really interested on the tool used to draw the diagrams on
this page:
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python_gui/
version/Doc/ownership.html

As far as I can remember, I drew them with Appleworks 6,
printed them to PDF files, opened them with Preview and
then saved them as jpegs. (Photoshop might also have been
involved in there somewhere, I don't recall now.)

Too bad these aren't tools available on Linux or FreeBSD... I really
liked the way they look :-)
Thanks for your attention and sorry for being such a PITA insisting on
the screenshots on your website. I only do that because I liked the API
;-)
Be seeing you,
--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Alex Martelli]

Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:
...

On a Mac it looks like anything else does on a Mac, and
on Linux or Windows it (currently) looks like anything
else that uses Gtk.
I'm not familiar with the looks on Macs... But I remember something of
it, from the last visit to a store that has some of these here
(I remember specially the design of the computers, the look of the
applications seemed very interesting, but KDE is approaching it very
fast, IMHO).

IMNSHO, nope -- I'm quite a fan of KDE, but I discovered Macs 9 months
ago and immediately fell in love with MacOSX's "Aqua" user interface
look and feel. These days I use a Mac for everything I can possibly use
one for, even though I mostly program for Linux (and a little Windows).
I really would like a lot if it was possible to write
non-GPL code with Qt (not that I'm against GPL software, but some

It's perfectly possible: Trolltech, the authors of Qt, will be extremely
happy to sell you a commercial license of Qt so you can develop and sell
your code as closed-source or whatever.

As far as I can remember, I drew them with Appleworks 6,
printed them to PDF files, opened them with Preview and
then saved them as jpegs. (Photoshop might also have been
involved in there somewhere, I don't recall now.)

Too bad these aren't tools available on Linux or FreeBSD... I really
liked the way they look :-)

Me too (well, not Photoshop, actually -- if I had to process images I
think I'd use GIMP instead), so I use them on my Mac iBook 12" laptop
(whose operating system's guts aren't all that far from FreeBSD --
there's some Mach microkernel involved, but it's very unlikely that
could possibly be a problem -- those guts are all opensource, too, under
the name of 'Darwin').
Alex

[Thomas Guettler]

Am Wed, 15 Sep 2004 05:15:31 -0700 schrieb Fritz Bosch:

Greg Ewing <gr**@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
...

There wouldn't be much to see in the screenshots anyway.
On a Mac it looks like anything else does on a Mac, and
on Linux or Windows it (currently) looks like anything
else that uses Gtk.

Being built with PyGUI using Gtk using Gimp, does my
application become subject to the GPL?

Hi,

Gtk does not use Gimp. Gimp uses Gtk.
And Gtk is AFAIK LGPL. You can use
Gtk and pyGTK in your commercial application.

Regards,
Thomas

[Jorge Godoy]

al*****@yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

I really would like a lot if it was possible to write
non-GPL code with Qt (not that I'm against GPL software, but some
It's perfectly possible: Trolltech, the authors of Qt, will be extremely
happy to sell you a commercial license of Qt so you can develop and sell
your code as closed-source or whatever.

Then I'd have to buy something like PyQT, and then I'd have to buy
something like ... :-)

I like the widgets, and the visual, but I can't afford buying a whole
toolchain for using it. So, I use the tools that are free, that allow
the commercial use, and when it is not possible, I let the client choose
paying for something commercial that he will keep after the project
delivery (after all, he paid for that) or writing free software (free
software was their choice 75% of the time, this is another reason I
wouldn't invest on buying a license of Qt for commercial software...).
Me too (well, not Photoshop, actually -- if I had to process images I
think I'd use GIMP instead), so I use them on my Mac iBook 12" laptop
(whose operating system's guts aren't all that far from FreeBSD --
there's some Mach microkernel involved, but it's very unlikely that
could possibly be a problem -- those guts are all opensource, too, under
the name of 'Darwin').

Indeed. Macs are cool, but expensive. Our salaries here in .br are not
like your in the US or Europe... :-)

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Alex Martelli]

Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:

al*****@yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

I really would like a lot if it was possible to write
non-GPL code with Qt (not that I'm against GPL software, but some
It's perfectly possible: Trolltech, the authors of Qt, will be extremely
happy to sell you a commercial license of Qt so you can develop and sell
your code as closed-source or whatever.

Then I'd have to buy something like PyQT, and then I'd have to buy
something like ... :-)

If you buy BlackAdder, it comes with PyQT and Qt licenses and is cheaper
than the Qt license for C++ development. A great bargain even if you
never use the IDE itself (unless you also want to do C++ dev't).
I like the widgets, and the visual, but I can't afford buying a whole
toolchain for using it. So, I use the tools that are free, that allow
I believe the "whole toolchain" (BlackAdder -- period) cost about $300
(==Euro 250) for a one-user license (commercial, with full right to
redistribute the apps you develop). I'm not sure how much you charge
for all of the apps you develop, but if 250 euros (fiscally deducible
from your fees, of course!) make a significant dent in your income, then
I agree that you can't afford Qt.

No doubt, eventually, wxPython (which has been growing by leaps and
bounds for quite a while now) will overtake Qt, and/or the cygwin guys
will manage to release a native GPL Qt for Windows, and/or PyGUI will
overtake both. For the last couple years, though, it seems to me that
anybody who claims he really wishes he could write (Python) non-GPL
commercial code with Qt and hasn't considered buying BlackAdder must
_definitely_ charge too little for the application he or she sells.

delivery (after all, he paid for that) or writing free software (free
software was their choice 75% of the time, this is another reason I
wouldn't invest on buying a license of Qt for commercial software...).
Unfortunately, GPL Qt doesn't (yet) run on Windows, which (for my
average customer) would be a blocking factor.

Indeed. Macs are cool, but expensive. Our salaries here in .br are not
like your in the US or Europe... :-)

Somebody just posted to it.comp.macintosh about their astonishment
regarding Mac prices: they carefully configured Dell and Mac machines
that were roughly equivalent -- pretty big ones (2GB RAM, 20" LCD
screens, 250 GB disk, and in the case of the Mac a 64-bit CPU) and they
came out to very much the same price, 3000 Eur including VAT. Except
that on the Mac a superb professional development system is free for the
downloading (XCode 1.5) while for Windows they'd need to splurge another
thousand or so for Visual Studio Enterprise, not to mention the Mac's
"iLife" suite (mostly not relevant to most professional users). They
were astonished because they'd chosen the cheapest Dell desktop that
could be pushed that high (a 4600, I believe).

I'm at the other end of the spectrum, with an iBook 12" ultraportable
which cost me, 9 months ago, roughly 1000, about 1/2 as much as the
closest comparable machine in the Windows world (an IBM Thinkpad X40).
In this case, adding the $$$ for Visual Studio to the mix, vs the free
XCode I have here, would make the price comparison just ridiculous.
People lusting for upgrades (because of course today's Mac are better
than last year's) are typically trying to sell such machines for 700-800
or thereabouts, if they're perfect except for their age of about a year.
I wouldn't know where to find a good ultraportable 12" in the PC world
for this kind of prices -- and if I did, Linux wouldn't perfectly
support its "sleep" facilities, a key issue in ultraportable laptops.

Of course, the PC world has a MUCH wider range of offerings, including
low-performance, low-quality ultracheap 250-or-so boxes -- that's what I
typically throw in (with OpenBSD on them) when I propose some
configuration to cheapskate customers. But, as I needed a good laptop,
with the amount of travel I do, that option just wasn't around for me.
Alex

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 00:23:36 +0200, Alex Martelli <al*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:

I like the widgets, and the visual, but I can't afford buying a whole
toolchain for using it. So, I use the tools that are free, that allow

I believe the "whole toolchain" (BlackAdder -- period) cost about $300
(==Euro 250) for a one-user license (commercial, with full right to
redistribute the apps you develop). I'm not sure how much you charge
for all of the apps you develop, but if 250 euros (fiscally deducible
from your fees, of course!) make a significant dent in your income, then
I agree that you can't afford Qt.

The biggest problem for we third-world money-impaired users that many
people don't realize is that we charge for our services in the local
currency, but have to buy stuff in strong currency (dollars or euros).
That's what kills us. *If* the conversion rate were lower (1:1, for
example, as it was a not so long time ago) it would be possible. I'll
tell you some figures.

An average programmer in Brazil makes betwen R$ 800,00 to R$
2000,00/month. The actual income, roughly converted, is in the US$ 270
-- US$ 650 range. Yes - is this low. Senior programmers or analyst can
make more, specially if they live in São Paulo, but then the actual
cost of living will make a much bigger dent on their income. In other
words - a US$ 300 tool is too expensive.

(AFAIK, there are some companies that run special discounts for
customers in third world countries. That's fair for software, I think.
It's a shame no more companies do the same)

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: ca********@gmail.com
mail: ca********@yahoo.com

[Jorge Godoy]

al*****@yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

If you buy BlackAdder, it comes with PyQT and Qt licenses and is cheaper
than the Qt license for C++ development. A great bargain even if you
never use the IDE itself (unless you also want to do C++ dev't).
I saw that... It is the most interesting offer on the product that I've
seen. The difference is a good one. US$ 399.99... PyQT alone costs
250.00 pounds sterling. I don't know if I have to have a license of Qt
too or if it is included with PyQT, I'd have to read more carefully to
find it out or ask them that.

I like the widgets, and the visual, but I can't afford buying a whole
toolchain for using it. So, I use the tools that are free, that allow

I believe the "whole toolchain" (BlackAdder -- period) cost about $300
(==Euro 250) for a one-user license (commercial, with full right to
redistribute the apps you develop). I'm not sure how much you charge
for all of the apps you develop, but if 250 euros (fiscally deducible
from your fees, of course!) make a significant dent in your income, then
I agree that you can't afford Qt.

This is not my reality, but 250 euros are more money than a lot of
people earn monthly here. Actually, it is the same amount a worker
should earn in 3 months if he is paid the minimum salary allowed by the
government (actually, there are people that receive as salary less than
1/3 of that minimum...).

So, even though *I* can buy, I still think it is an expensive product.
Another calculation one should do is the ROI of such an investment. So
far, as I said in my previous message, the demand for it has not
convinced me to buy it. Yet. And yes, I point it out as an option in
some projects.
No doubt, eventually, wxPython (which has been growing by leaps and
bounds for quite a while now) will overtake Qt, and/or the cygwin guys
will manage to release a native GPL Qt for Windows, and/or PyGUI will
overtake both. For the last couple years, though, it seems to me that
anybody who claims he really wishes he could write (Python) non-GPL
commercial code with Qt and hasn't considered buying BlackAdder must
_definitely_ charge too little for the application he or she sells.
If PyGUI will have native widgets for Windows as it does for Mac, I hope
it becomes standard. Its API seemed cleaner than wxPython's (and with
one less emulation layer than wax, as pointed out on this thread...).

With regards to charging, one must take into account the economic
reality of the place where such a person lives. If you see the above
you'll see that the cost is not the only problem, the value is (there's
a difference in being expensive and having a high price... at least in
Portuguese there's an important difference).

delivery (after all, he paid for that) or writing free software (free
software was their choice 75% of the time, this is another reason I
wouldn't invest on buying a license of Qt for commercial software...).

Unfortunately, GPL Qt doesn't (yet) run on Windows, which (for my
average customer) would be a blocking factor.

This is what led me to use wxPython on one project of mine... Even it
being free software, I need to keep a Windows version of it for another
year or so.
Somebody just posted to it.comp.macintosh about their astonishment
regarding Mac prices: they carefully configured Dell and Mac machines
that were roughly equivalent -- pretty big ones (2GB RAM, 20" LCD
screens, 250 GB disk, and in the case of the Mac a 64-bit CPU) and they
came out to very much the same price, 3000 Eur including VAT. Except
that on the Mac a superb professional development system is free for the
downloading (XCode 1.5) while for Windows they'd need to splurge another
thousand or so for Visual Studio Enterprise, not to mention the Mac's
"iLife" suite (mostly not relevant to most professional users). They
were astonished because they'd chosen the cheapest Dell desktop that
could be pushed that high (a 4600, I believe).
Dell is with low prices here, compared to what we see on the market. I
was looking at one receipt two days ago, with another consultant, and we
saw that a 1600 with nice hardware cost near US$ 1300.00 here. Buying
the same machine -- P4 2.80 GHz with HT, 80 GB SCSI disks capable of 80
MB/s at 160 MHz, 256 MiB of RAM, CD, Gigabit Ethernet adapter,
etc. etc. etc. -- anywhere else would be more expensive than that.

I remember iBooks starting at something like US$ 2100.00... That's more
than half of the Dell :-)
I'm at the other end of the spectrum, with an iBook 12" ultraportable
which cost me, 9 months ago, roughly 1000, about 1/2 as much as the
closest comparable machine in the Windows world (an IBM Thinkpad X40).
I wish we had those prices here...
In this case, adding the $$$ for Visual Studio to the mix, vs the free
XCode I have here, would make the price comparison just ridiculous.
Indeed. But then, if you bought the other computer without Windows and
added a free operating system -- you said you use Linux... --, with its
development tools, then things would start being more comparable.
People lusting for upgrades (because of course today's Mac are better
than last year's) are typically trying to sell such machines for 700-800
or thereabouts, if they're perfect except for their age of about a year.
*sigh*
I wouldn't know where to find a good ultraportable 12" in the PC world
for this kind of prices -- and if I did, Linux wouldn't perfectly
support its "sleep" facilities, a key issue in ultraportable laptops.
I've read somewhere about enhancements to this function in the most
recent kernel. I can't say anything about it, though, since I don't own
a notebook.
Of course, the PC world has a MUCH wider range of offerings, including
low-performance, low-quality ultracheap 250-or-so boxes -- that's what
I typically throw in (with OpenBSD on them) when I propose some
configuration to cheapskate customers. But, as I needed a good
laptop, with the amount of travel I do, that option just wasn't around
for me.

Heh. I do something on the same line you do: cheap boxes with a good
OpenSource OS where they fit. And I also need a good box with a good
OpenSource OS to me. ;-)
My machines here are 100% free and in the country where 60+% of the
software is illegal, I'm very proud of saying that there's nothing
without a proper license here :-)
Maybe I'm just talking about BlackAdder's/Qt's price because of this
culture here or because I'm used to use free (as in free speech and in
free beer ;-)) software... But I really think that if it was cheaper it
would be more used. I have bought several software for my PDAs, some
for my old mobile too...

If I had to pay something like 5 dollars for each copy of the software
or something more expensive for a customized software (e.g. US$ 50.00,
if I sell the product for less than US$ 10,000.00 and more than US$
1,000.00, US$ 500.00 if US$ 10,000.00 < my software price < US$
100,000.00, etc.) it would be more interesting from a commercial point
of view and would also be easier to include such a cost at the product
price.

Of course, I'm looking at my side, they found that their business model
is different and I must either accept it or not use it. For now, not
using it -- even liking more the appearance of the widgets -- has been
my choice.

I guess I deviated a lot from the original intention of the post, and
I'm sorry for that. It wasn't my intention. I just wanted to see the
toolkit on the OSs it supports :-)

Be seeing you,
--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Jorge Godoy]

Carlos Ribeiro <ca********@gmail.com> writes:

The biggest problem for we third-world money-impaired users that many
people don't realize is that we charge for our services in the local
currency, but have to buy stuff in strong currency (dollars or euros).
That's what kills us. *If* the conversion rate were lower (1:1, for
example, as it was a not so long time ago) it would be possible. I'll
tell you some figures.
It was a good time that one. But then, it was an artificial and
unsustainable situation for the economics of Brasil. If it had been
more recently, then I believe it would last longer.
An average programmer in Brazil makes betwen R$ 800,00 to R$
2000,00/month. The actual income, roughly converted, is in the US$ 270
-- US$ 650 range. Yes - is this low. Senior programmers or analyst can
make more, specially if they live in São Paulo, but then the actual
cost of living will make a much bigger dent on their income. In other
words - a US$ 300 tool is too expensive.
And you are taking a good income (R$ 2000,00). I explained about the
minimum wage here... US$ 80.00 against the (I believe) US$ 1100.00 in
the US and probably something like that in the EU countries.
(AFAIK, there are some companies that run special discounts for
customers in third world countries. That's fair for software, I think.
It's a shame no more companies do the same)

Specially with the distribution model where you download everything from
the Internet... No storage costs, no S&H costs...

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Hans Nowak]

Jorge Godoy wrote:

If PyGUI will have native widgets for Windows as it does for Mac, I hope
it becomes standard. Its API seemed cleaner than wxPython's (and with
one less emulation layer than wax, as pointed out on this thread...).

I didn't see the post that pointed this out... Anyway, this is really only a
problem in theory. I haven't done any benchmarks, but Wax doesn't feel slower
than "pure" wxPython, and (if I may say so myself) is a lot easier to program
in. (Developer time vs program execution time and all that... :-)

--
Hans Nowak (ha**@zephyrfalcon.org)
http://zephyrfalcon.org/

[Jorge Godoy]

Hans Nowak <ha**@zephyrfalcon.org> writes:

Jorge Godoy wrote:

If PyGUI will have native widgets for Windows as it does for Mac, I hope
it becomes standard. Its API seemed cleaner than wxPython's (and with
one less emulation layer than wax, as pointed out on this
thread...).
I didn't see the post that pointed this out... Anyway, this is really only a

I may be mixing threads. Today is being a tiresome day... and it seems
that it won't end by midnight. :-(
problem in theory. I haven't done any benchmarks, but Wax doesn't feel slower
than "pure" wxPython, and (if I may say so myself) is a lot easier to program
in. (Developer time vs program execution time and all that... :-)

I should really find some time to give it a try...

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Alex Martelli]

Carlos Ribeiro <ca********@gmail.com> wrote:
...

The biggest problem for we third-world money-impaired users that many
people don't realize is that we charge for our services in the local
currency, but have to buy stuff in strong currency (dollars or euros).

Very good point, thanks. So, comparative advantage suggests that you
guys should be the ones developing and selling general-purpose tools
through the internet to developers in the relatively richer countries,
while said developers in those countries should rather be doing custom
applications for their local customers. Developing a tool such as, say,
BlackAdder or WingIDE, should cost MUCH less over there, yet if sales
are all done through the net it should not matter at all whether a tool
is written in Brazil or Norway.

Clearly it's not happening. Even third-world countries with HUGE
presence in the IT industry, such as India, are totally concentrating on
developing custom applications, not tools for resale via the net. As
far as I know all commercial IDE's and other tools of that ilk come from
Canada, the US, and the rich parts of Europe. It's a puzzlement!
Alex

[Alex Martelli]

Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:

al*****@yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

If you buy BlackAdder, it comes with PyQT and Qt licenses and is cheaper
than the Qt license for C++ development. A great bargain even if you
never use the IDE itself (unless you also want to do C++ dev't).
I saw that... It is the most interesting offer on the product that I've
seen. The difference is a good one. US$ 399.99... PyQT alone costs
250.00 pounds sterling. I don't know if I have to have a license of Qt
too or if it is included with PyQT, I'd have to read more carefully to
find it out or ask them that.

If you want to develop in C++ as well, you need a Qt license. What you
get with BlackAdder comes with a license to redistribute only apps you
write in Python, not those you write in C++.
Another calculation one should do is the ROI of such an investment. So
That's the key one, of course.
far, as I said in my previous message, the demand for it has not
convinced me to buy it. Yet. And yes, I point it out as an option in
some projects.
But if the customer buys it, rather than you, the ROI is going to be
lower. They get a license to redistrib apps they won't ever write, and
you're back to the same issue on the next proj for another customer. If
you buy the license, you can then redistrib to any or all of the many
customers you write apps for.

If PyGUI will have native widgets for Windows as it does for Mac, I hope
it becomes standard. Its API seemed cleaner than wxPython's (and with
one less emulation layer than wax, as pointed out on this thread...).
Yes. It all depends on somebody wanting to scratch that particular
itch, as usual for opensource projects.
I remember iBooks starting at something like US$ 2100.00... That's more
than half of the Dell :-)
iBooks start at about HALF what you remember.

I'm at the other end of the spectrum, with an iBook 12" ultraportable
which cost me, 9 months ago, roughly 1000, about 1/2 as much as the
closest comparable machine in the Windows world (an IBM Thinkpad X40).

I wish we had those prices here...

I wish we had those prices here, too. We don't, so I buy in the US: any
AppleStore there is happy to sell me an iBook, and Apple's warranty on
portable products is worldwide. (And I far _prefer_ the US-layout
keyboard I get that way to an Italian-layout one -- US and Spanish are
the only layouts you can buy in the US).

Why Apple chooses to price stuff cheap in richer countries, US foremost,
and dearer the poorer the country, I dunno.

In this case, adding the $$$ for Visual Studio to the mix, vs the free
XCode I have here, would make the price comparison just ridiculous.

Indeed. But then, if you bought the other computer without Windows and
added a free operating system -- you said you use Linux... --, with its
development tools, then things would start being more comparable.

Indeed, Linux is what I run on desktops, and I go back with it to 0.92.
But on laptops all of my attempts haven't yet produced one that can deal
with 'sleep' properly, while on the iBook _it just works_, no hassles.

I wouldn't know where to find a good ultraportable 12" in the PC world
for this kind of prices -- and if I did, Linux wouldn't perfectly
support its "sleep" facilities, a key issue in ultraportable laptops.

I've read somewhere about enhancements to this function in the most
recent kernel. I can't say anything about it, though, since I don't own
a notebook.

I'll check it out eventually, since I do have a couple of old
intel-based notebooks. But I've heard about such enhancements about
every release on the last few years so I'm not holding my breath.
My machines here are 100% free and in the country where 60+% of the
software is illegal, I'm very proud of saying that there's nothing
without a proper license here :-)
That's very important -- piracy is pretty widespread in Southern Europe,
too, and from my POV what it does is first and foremost present unfair
competition to free software.
Maybe I'm just talking about BlackAdder's/Qt's price because of this
culture here or because I'm used to use free (as in free speech and in
free beer ;-)) software... But I really think that if it was cheaper it
Hmmm, but it seems that the main issue you have with Qt is that it's
free only if you DO use it on and for free software -- that's what the
GPL is all about. If a free-software culture it's OK; in a
software=for=money culture it's OK; it seems to grate only on developers
who want not to pay for the software they use but still charge for the
software they sell.
would be more used. I have bought several software for my PDAs, some
for my old mobile too...

If I had to pay something like 5 dollars for each copy of the software
or something more expensive for a customized software (e.g. US$ 50.00,
if I sell the product for less than US$ 10,000.00 and more than US$
1,000.00, US$ 500.00 if US$ 10,000.00 < my software price < US$
100,000.00, etc.) it would be more interesting from a commercial point
of view and would also be easier to include such a cost at the product
price.
Personally, I'm extremely happy that the culture of commercial software
is moving away from such complicated pricing schemes that were the norm
some years ago. The attempt to reflect "what is this sw actually worth
to YOU" doesn't work, anyway. I can have a 1000-$ program where, say,
Qt's functionality is actually 80% of what I'm doing -- a program that's
mostly-GUI... -- and I can have a 10000-$ one where the GUI matters very
marginally, say the program is mostly about clever heuristic engines
scavenging through DBs and networks and all I want is a little sysadm
GUI console on the side for a customer's sysadm to keep an eye on
things.

Of course, I'm looking at my side, they found that their business model
is different and I must either accept it or not use it. For now, not
using it -- even liking more the appearance of the widgets -- has been
my choice.
It's definitely your choice. I do hope you get some opportunity to do
GPL development and try it out, because I think it's really good.
I guess I deviated a lot from the original intention of the post, and
I'm sorry for that. It wasn't my intention. I just wanted to see the
toolkit on the OSs it supports :-)

If you're looking for a native appearance on Windows, as I understand
things, you won't get it with PyGUI until somebody makes a back-end...
Alex

[Cameron Laird]

In article <1g****************************@yahoo.com>,
Alex Martelli <al*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:
...

> On a Mac it looks like anything else does on a Mac, and
> on Linux or Windows it (currently) looks like anything
> else that uses Gtk.

I'm not familiar with the looks on Macs... But I remember something of
it, from the last visit to a store that has some of these here
(I remember specially the design of the computers, the look of the
applications seemed very interesting, but KDE is approaching it very
fast, IMHO).

IMNSHO, nope -- I'm quite a fan of KDE, but I discovered Macs 9 months
ago and immediately fell in love with MacOSX's "Aqua" user interface
look and feel. These days I use a Mac for everything I can possibly use
one for, even though I mostly program for Linux (and a little Windows).

I really would like a lot if it was possible to write
non-GPL code with Qt (not that I'm against GPL software, but some

It's perfectly possible: Trolltech, the authors of Qt, will be extremely
happy to sell you a commercial license of Qt so you can develop and sell
your code as closed-source or whatever.

> As far as I can remember, I drew them with Appleworks 6,
> printed them to PDF files, opened them with Preview and
> then saved them as jpegs. (Photoshop might also have been
> involved in there somewhere, I don't recall now.)

Too bad these aren't tools available on Linux or FreeBSD... I really
liked the way they look :-)

Me too (well, not Photoshop, actually -- if I had to process images I
think I'd use GIMP instead), so I use them on my Mac iBook 12" laptop
(whose operating system's guts aren't all that far from FreeBSD --
there's some Mach microkernel involved, but it's very unlikely that
could possibly be a problem -- those guts are all opensource, too, under
the name of 'Darwin').

[Neil Hodgson]

Alex Martelli:

Developing a tool such as, say,
BlackAdder or WingIDE, should cost MUCH less over there, yet if sales
are all done through the net it should not matter at all whether a tool
is written in Brazil or Norway.

Clearly it's not happening. Even third-world countries with HUGE
presence in the IT industry, such as India, are totally concentrating on
developing custom applications, not tools for resale via the net. As
far as I know all commercial IDE's and other tools of that ilk come from
Canada, the US, and the rich parts of Europe. It's a puzzlement!

Much of development staff at theKompany are located in Romania and
Ukraine. I've worked on development tool projects where most of the software
was developed in Egypt and India although the brand on the products appeared
USAn.

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php...12-20-PS-BZ-KE

Neil

[Alex Martelli]

Neil Hodgson <nh******@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
...

Clearly it's not happening. Even third-world countries with HUGE

... Much of development staff at theKompany are located in Romania and
Ukraine. I've worked on development tool projects where most of the software
was developed in Egypt and India although the brand on the products appeared
USAn.

So I was wrong -- it's happening all right, but tends to be disguised
(perhaps for marketing reasons). Thanks for the info!
Alex

[Terry Reedy]

"Alex Martelli" <al*****@yahoo.com> wrote in message

So I was wrong -- it's happening all right, but tends to be disguised
(perhaps for marketing reasons). Thanks for the info!

Also for political reasons. The US has reactionaries, left and right, who
reject the idea that all people have a right to participate in the global
information economy.

Terry J.Reedy

[Joe Laughlin]

Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:

I'm a fan of Greg Ewing's PyGUI [1]. I used it to code a
simple game for my son [2], and enjoyed it. Programming
with wxPython feels like programming with a C++ tool that
has been wrapped in Python. Programming with PyGUI feels
like programming with a real Python tool.

If you're developing a commercial application in Python,
wxPython is currently the only option that offers native
widgets on w32. It would be a boost for Python if PyGUI
got a native w32 backend.

Therefore, I offer the following suggestions:

Python programmers: use PyGUI! It's nice. Contribute
bug reports and so forth.

Python developers: Is it too early to include PyGUI in
the standard library? It seems stable to me.

PSF: If anyone applies for a grant [3] to put a proper
w32 backend into PyGUI, please give them money. I would
offer to do that job myself, but (a) I'm not w32 expert
and (b) I'm busy trying to make one of those
aforementioned commercial apps.

Thanks,

Zooko, Journeyman Hacker

[1] http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python_gui/
[2] http://zooko.com/log-2004.html#d2004-06-23
[3] http://python.org/psf/call-2004.html

I tried to build PyGui and I got..

% python setup.py build
<snip>
copying GUI/Gtk/Geometry.py -> build/lib/GUI/Gtk
copying GUI/Gtk/ScrollBars.py -> build/lib/GUI/Gtk
package init file 'GUI/Generic/__init__.py' not found (or not a regular
file)
package init file 'GUI/Mac/__init__.py' not found (or not a regular file)
package init file 'GUI/Gtk/__init__.py' not found (or not a regular file)

And sure enough, those files don't exist. Ideas?

[Leif K-Brooks]

Jorge Godoy wrote:

BTW, I got really interested on the tool used to draw the diagrams on
this page:
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg/python_gui/
version/Doc/ownership.html

As far as I can remember, I drew them with Appleworks 6,
printed them to PDF files, opened them with Preview and
then saved them as jpegs. (Photoshop might also have been
involved in there somewhere, I don't recall now.)

Too bad these aren't tools available on Linux or FreeBSD... I really
liked the way they look :-)

OpenOffice.org can make diagrams like those pretty easily.

[Jorge Godoy]

al*****@yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

I remember iBooks starting at something like US$ 2100.00... That's more
than half of the Dell :-)
iBooks start at about HALF what you remember.

Not here. :-) As I said, I wish we had the prices you do in Europe and
in the US.
Why Apple chooses to price stuff cheap in richer countries, US foremost,
and dearer the poorer the country, I dunno.
I think their logistics cost is lower in the US than in the rest of the
world. Their market is bigger there too.
That's very important -- piracy is pretty widespread in Southern Europe,
too, and from my POV what it does is first and foremost present unfair
competition to free software.
I am tired of showing clients that they have to be very careful not to
buy a cat instead of a rabbit... ;-)
Hmmm, but it seems that the main issue you have with Qt is that it's
free only if you DO use it on and for free software -- that's what the
GPL is all about. If a free-software culture it's OK; in a
software=for=money culture it's OK; it seems to grate only on developers
who want not to pay for the software they use but still charge for the
software they sell.
I would pay for it if the price was fair to me. It isn't, so I have to
avoid using it. It's that simple...

Fortunately, we're starting to do more free software than closed
software.

Things are getting better. :-)
Personally, I'm extremely happy that the culture of commercial software
is moving away from such complicated pricing schemes that were the norm
some years ago. The attempt to reflect "what is this sw actually worth
There are some market niche where it still happens... And for software
licensed per CPU, how is it billed on HT enabled CPUs? ;-) The hardware
starts adding more complications to such commercial licensing world.
to YOU" doesn't work, anyway. I can have a 1000-$ program where, say,
Qt's functionality is actually 80% of what I'm doing -- a program that's
mostly-GUI... -- and I can have a 10000-$ one where the GUI matters very
marginally, say the program is mostly about clever heuristic engines
scavenging through DBs and networks and all I want is a little sysadm
GUI console on the side for a customer's sysadm to keep an eye on
things.

Then, this is your choice to use such a GUI or not. It's the same thing
I do with the free / not free (free beer) stuff now. If the software I
write is free (free speech and possibly free beer), I don't mind that
much in making it GPL or BSDL or anothr free license (I personally like
the GPL idea, so this is the one I use).

Of course, I'm looking at my side, they found that their business model
is different and I must either accept it or not use it. For now, not
using it -- even liking more the appearance of the widgets -- has been
my choice.

It's definitely your choice. I do hope you get some opportunity to do
GPL development and try it out, because I think it's really good.

I do it. And I like it too. But I have to pay the bills and even
though everything is transferred to the customer, some of them don't
like the idea of a free license to their software.

I guess I deviated a lot from the original intention of the post, and
I'm sorry for that. It wasn't my intention. I just wanted to see the
toolkit on the OSs it supports :-)

If you're looking for a native appearance on Windows, as I understand
things, you won't get it with PyGUI until somebody makes a back-end...

I am not looking for it. I use wxPython and it does give me that. And
the native look on Mac too. I was just saying that a GUI toolkit with
no pictures of how it looks like on its website is bad marketing. I
hope it all doesn't start again :-)

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Jorge Godoy]

cl****@lairds.us (Cameron Laird) writes:

Incidentally, my expert sources emphasize to me that GIMP still
has a long way to go before it effectively rivals Photoshop.

I've been told that too. Maybe because I'm not into the graphics area I
think it works pretty well :-) There are other tools such as SodiPodi,
too...

In fact, we might already have tools to do everything Photoshop does.
The difference is that we try to keep it simple (KISS) and bundle
several specialized tools, while Photoshop tries to be a swiss army
knife, bundling everything together.

I'm hearing more the FUD of "I want to use Linux but then I have to use
one thousand commands and programs to get the same results I get with
<proprietary program> on <proprietary OS>".

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Greg Ewing]

Jorge Godoy wrote:

I'm not familiar with the looks on Macs...

In that case, seeing a screen shot wouldn't
help you decide whether it looked Mac-like. :-)

As far as I can remember, I drew them with Appleworks 6,
printed them to PDF files, opened them with Preview and
then saved them as jpegs. (Photoshop might also have been
involved in there somewhere, I don't recall now.)

Too bad these aren't tools available on Linux or FreeBSD... I really
liked the way they look :-)

Yep, once again, Apple is way ahead of everyone else with
their integration of PDF imaging into the core graphics
stuff. That's what gives those images their nice anti-
aliased look...

--
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg

[Greg Ewing]

Joe Laughlin wrote:

I tried to build PyGui and I got..

package init file 'GUI/Generic/__init__.py' not found (or not a regular
file)
package init file 'GUI/Mac/__init__.py' not found (or not a regular file)
package init file 'GUI/Gtk/__init__.py' not found (or not a regular file)

Ignore those messages! It has been installed. Trust me.

(I really will have to do something about that... it
seems to be scaring a lot of people.)

--
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg

[Ville Vainio]

>>>>> "Terry" == Terry Reedy <tj*****@udel.edu> writes:

Terry> Also for political reasons. The US has reactionaries, left
Terry> and right, who reject the idea that all people have a right
Terry> to participate in the global information economy.

I don't think that's exclusively an US concern - all industrialized
countries have people who are concerned about outsourcing,
globalization and generally losing their jobs.

--
Ville Vainio http://tinyurl.com/2prnb

[Alex Martelli]

Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:
...

I remember iBooks starting at something like US$ 2100.00... That's more
than half of the Dell :-)
iBooks start at about HALF what you remember.

Not here. :-) As I said, I wish we had the prices you do in Europe and
in the US.

They're higher here (at today's exchange rates, 1467 vs 1099 for an
entry-level iBook). My solution, as I mentioned, is buying in the US.
Apple of course tries to stop any attempt to go around their market
segmentation, but for portable products that's not easy for them.

Why Apple chooses to price stuff cheap in richer countries, US foremost,
and dearer the poorer the country, I dunno.

I think their logistics cost is lower in the US than in the rest of the
world. Their market is bigger there too.

Convenient excuses for Apple's market-fragmentation strategy,
unfortunately (for them) easily shown as such. All iBooks are shipped
from Taiwan, for example -- getting them to US, Brazil or the
Netherlands is basically the same. The quarrel 'du jour' against Apple,
to give another example, is about the fact that iTunes song downloads
cost 20% more in the UK than Germany or France, and the latter two
countries won't even let you buy unless you can give a French/German
address and credit card (in Italy you can't buy from any of these
stores... unless you're lucky enough to have an address and credit card
in the appropriate country...). This is arguably against Europe's
single-market laws, and since we're talking about downloads over the net
the "logistics" argument is laid bare for the feeble excuse it is.
Indeed Apple's response that I've seen is not about trying to argue that
it costs more to push bits to London than to Paris, but rather that
iTunes song prices should be compared, not with the prices of the same
song in different countries, but rather with the prices of other songs
from competitors in the same country. In other words, Apple is charging
all the market will bear, segmenting markets ruthlessly to do so, even
when they have to break laws in order to scrounge extra profits that
way. I think it's quite a myopic attitude, eroding any goodwill from
people who LIKE their products and turning it into rage and loathing.

If and when the costs of delivery are higher it's quite reasonable to
charge "X+postage and handling" for a fixed X. For example, delivering
to an address just next door to an AppleStore may well be cheaper than
delivering to some rural address in the heartlands. But does Apple
charge the rural customers more? No way -- _in the US_ they're quite
careful to avoid the horrid PR that would result from THAT. Elsewhere,
apparently, they don't really care -- if Apple believes that Britons can
be gouged for 20% more than Frenchmen, they pounce on it. I find that
sad when I'm not foaming at the mouth against it;-).

I do with the free / not free (free beer) stuff now. If the software I
write is free (free speech and possibly free beer), I don't mind that
much in making it GPL or BSDL or anothr free license (I personally like
the GPL idea, so this is the one I use).

You like it and use it when you write software yourself, yet you
expressed the desire that Qt didn't, so you could use it when you write
software that's not free. "Do unto others as you would have others do
unto you" seems a fundamental, reasonable principle of fairness: aren't
you violating it here, by using a license you wish others didn't use?
Alex

[Alex Martelli]

Ville Vainio <vi***@spammers.com> wrote:

>> "Terry" == Terry Reedy <tj*****@udel.edu> writes:

Terry> Also for political reasons. The US has reactionaries, left
Terry> and right, who reject the idea that all people have a right
Terry> to participate in the global information economy.

I don't think that's exclusively an US concern - all industrialized
countries have people who are concerned about outsourcing,
globalization and generally losing their jobs.

True, but (for example) the British minister for eCommerce drew standing
ovations at a conference in India last February by reaffirming quite
intensely that Britain will never again try protectionism or subsidies
to save fading industries at the cost of taxpayer money and stagnation.

Apparently, Britain has been there before, and while no doubt _some_
people won't agree, there seems to have evolved a national consensus in
favour of an open economy -- that minister is just as much of a
politician as, say, US ones, but clearly he evaluates that this stance
doesn't cost him votes overall.

Other nations don't seem to be as far along on the curve. The US, in
particular, seems to go for bipartisan verbal consensus against free
trace on every election year -- even administrations whose actual
policies were quite free-tradeish, such as Clinton's, seemed to feel a
need to appease protectionists with occasional bouts of rhetorics and
once in a while a highly visible trade row.

That's worrisome, because those who can't learn from history are doomed
to repeat it, and it sure seems, at times, that the US political
consensus hasn't learned, e.g. from the precedent of the Smoot-Hawley
tariffs, that beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism can be disastrous.
Alex

[Jorge Godoy]

al*****@yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

You like it and use it when you write software yourself, yet you
expressed the desire that Qt didn't, so you could use it when you write
software that's not free. "Do unto others as you would have others do
unto you" seems a fundamental, reasonable principle of fairness: aren't
you violating it here, by using a license you wish others didn't use?

I don't see where, since all I said was that I wantd to *pay* less. I
want it free when I write free software (in both senses of free here,
either alone or combined). I already have saved a lot of money by using
free languages/compilers to write commercial software but if they costed
a fair amount, then I'd pay for it. I don't think that 3 months os a
worker's salary is fair for any software.

Here, market segmentation would be useful :-) (/me runs!)
Be seeing you,
--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Jorge Godoy]

Greg Ewing <gr**@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

Jorge Godoy wrote:

I'm not familiar with the looks on Macs...
In that case, seeing a screen shot wouldn't help you decide whether it
looked Mac-like. :-)

No, but would help me seeing if it has a pleasurable look. :-)

I would believe if it had screenshots and said it has native look and
after some public announces nobody contested it. :-)
Yep, once again, Apple is way ahead of everyone else with their
integration of PDF imaging into the core graphics stuff. That's what
gives those images their nice anti- aliased look...

People said here we can get that with OpenOffice.org... I'll try it
later. The problem is not the result -- as I think we can get those
results with SodiPodi, Gimp and other tools in a chain or even
alone... -- but the effort to get that result.
Be seeing you,
--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 11:40:56 -0300, Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:

People said here we can get that with OpenOffice.org... I'll try it
later. The problem is not the result -- as I think we can get those
results with SodiPodi, Gimp and other tools in a chain or even
alone... -- but the effort to get that result.

As far as I know, no open source tool is close to the quality that
professional tools like Adobe Acrobat can give to you. Part of the
problem is economics -- it takes a lot of money to fine tune visual
output, it takes a lot of testing with different media, and a lot of
time to get it right. Another problem is that coders alone can't do
it; you need to have people highly specialized in design theory,
visual perception theory, etc. It's a highly skilled, very well paid
staff. And last, there are patents -- lots of -- in color handling and
anti-aliasing. Adobe holds a number of such patents, as do Apple and
Microsoft, as well as many other companies.

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: ca********@gmail.com
mail: ca********@yahoo.com

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 23:49:24 -0300, Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:

cl****@lairds.us (Cameron Laird) writes:

Incidentally, my expert sources emphasize to me that GIMP still
has a long way to go before it effectively rivals Photoshop.

< (snip) In fact, we might already have tools to do everything Photoshop does.
The difference is that we try to keep it simple (KISS) and bundle
several specialized tools, while Photoshop tries to be a swiss army
knife, bundling everything together.
While true to a certain extent, this is not the problem. As I've
mentioned in another thread, this is a case where the closed source
application is simply superior in technical terms. It's not only
packaging -- it works better, more efficiently, and has better
algorithms specially when it comes to color mapping between devices,
and anything that involves perceptual color models and management.
I'm hearing more the FUD of "I want to use Linux but then I have to use
one thousand commands and programs to get the same results I get with
<proprietary program> on <proprietary OS>".

With all respect, this is not FUD. It's based on fact. In *many* cases
the OS app is not conveniently packaged. Part of this is that most
people that use OS apps are used to (and even like) having to glue
everything together.

No we're going completely offtopic, but anyway, why not? :-) I think
everyone can relate with a joke about cars and people that work with
cars. Often we see people that work everyday with cars -- specially
mechanics -- driving cars that, from any reasonably perspective, are a
complete mess. Doors hanging semi-opened are not unheard of :-). But
the car works, and his owner actually likes that mess. I think we can
see some of this in OS apps. Those who know how they are implemented
derive a certain pleasure from the fact that they can look at the
inside whenever they can, mess up with settings, and stuff like that.
Those who want a car -- or an OS, or an application -- only for actual
use doesn't like this, and prefer something nicely packaged, that
hides all details, and simply works, and don't embarass them in front
of friends and family :-).

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: ca********@gmail.com
mail: ca********@yahoo.com

[Jorge Godoy]

Carlos Ribeiro <ca********@gmail.com> writes:

While true to a certain extent, this is not the problem. As I've
mentioned in another thread, this is a case where the closed source
application is simply superior in technical terms. It's not only
packaging -- it works better, more efficiently, and has better
algorithms specially when it comes to color mapping between devices,
and anything that involves perceptual color models and management.
Patents are a problem. All the rest is not. There are several good
designers and programmers on free software and that support the idea.
With all respect, this is not FUD. It's based on fact. In *many* cases
the OS app is not conveniently packaged. Part of this is that most
people that use OS apps are used to (and even like) having to glue
everything together.
In many cases yes, in many other no. The problem -- and the reason why
I called this FUD -- is the generalization.
No we're going completely offtopic, but anyway, why not? :-) I think
everyone can relate with a joke about cars and people that work with
cars. Often we see people that work everyday with cars -- specially
mechanics -- driving cars that, from any reasonably perspective, are a
complete mess. Doors hanging semi-opened are not unheard of :-). But
the car works, and his owner actually likes that mess. I think we can
see some of this in OS apps. Those who know how they are implemented
derive a certain pleasure from the fact that they can look at the
inside whenever they can, mess up with settings, and stuff like that.
Those who want a car -- or an OS, or an application -- only for actual
use doesn't like this, and prefer something nicely packaged, that
hides all details, and simply works, and don't embarass them in front
of friends and family :-).

There are several apps whose only purpose is to provide a nice GUI to
glue those tools together. If your OS (or Linux distribution) provides
a nice package management system, then you also don't have to worry with
dependencies.

I don't think of free software as a mess in its code. There are very
nice examples of very well written software. On the other hand, I've
seen commercial software with closed source code that is worse than
spaghetti code, and since it is closed, nobody sees it :-) Also, I've
read terrible workarounds by developers of closed source code in mailing
lists.

Your program will not be different just because it is free software/open
source. It will be different if you are organized or not. Open source
software, IMNSHO, makes people write better code because this is how
they will present themselves to the world. If they can hide their mess,
they won't be too worried with it.

And, thanks God, there's no "one size fits all" solution. People like
us will be hired to fix code, to fix problems and to glue things
together. :-)

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[JanC]

Jorge Godoy schreef:

cl****@lairds.us (Cameron Laird) writes:

Incidentally, my expert sources emphasize to me that GIMP still
has a long way to go before it effectively rivals Photoshop.

I've been told that too. Maybe because I'm not into the graphics area I
think it works pretty well :-)

Just try to make a CMYK separation or use Pantone colors in The GIMP and
you'll know what they are talking about... ;-)

--
JanC

"Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving."
RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet - section 3.9

[JanC]

Alex Martelli schreef:

The quarrel 'du jour' against Apple,
to give another example, is about the fact that iTunes song downloads
cost 20% more in the UK than Germany or France, and the latter two
countries won't even let you buy unless you can give a French/German
address and credit card (in Italy you can't buy from any of these
stores... unless you're lucky enough to have an address and credit card
in the appropriate country...). This is arguably against Europe's
single-market laws, and since we're talking about downloads over the net
the "logistics" argument is laid bare for the feeble excuse it is.
Indeed Apple's response that I've seen is not about trying to argue that
it costs more to push bits to London than to Paris, but rather that
iTunes song prices should be compared, not with the prices of the same
song in different countries, but rather with the prices of other songs
from competitors in the same country. In other words, Apple is charging
all the market will bear, segmenting markets ruthlessly to do so, even
when they have to break laws in order to scrounge extra profits that
way. I think it's quite a myopic attitude, eroding any goodwill from
people who LIKE their products and turning it into rage and loathing.

This is probably not only Apple's fault. Most local music distribution
rights are owned by different, local companies that don't want to lose
their possible income/power, so online music stores like Apple often have
to make separate agreements per country...

--
JanC

"Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving."
RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet - section 3.9

[Jorge Godoy]

JanC <us*********@janc.invalid> writes:

Jorge Godoy schreef:

cl****@lairds.us (Cameron Laird) writes:

Incidentally, my expert sources emphasize to me that GIMP still
has a long way to go before it effectively rivals Photoshop.

I've been told that too. Maybe because I'm not into the graphics area I
think it works pretty well :-)

Just try to make a CMYK separation or use Pantone colors in The GIMP and
you'll know what they are talking about... ;-)

To be honest, I have no idea what are these things for. I just know
that there's something with regards to CMYK here, but I haven't seen
Pantone. (OK, I know that these are color representation "tables", but
I don't know when to use one or the other or when to use RGB... An
architect friend of mine explained that but she was talking about other
things too and I didn't pay much attention to that...)

--
Godoy. <go***@ieee.org>

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 21:43:56 -0300, Jorge Godoy <go***@ieee.org> wrote:

To be honest, I have no idea what are these things for. I just know
that there's something with regards to CMYK here, but I haven't seen
Pantone. (OK, I know that these are color representation "tables", but
I don't know when to use one or the other or when to use RGB... An
architect friend of mine explained that but she was talking about other
things too and I didn't pay much attention to that...)

Pantone is a table of standard spot colors. It's used in professional
printing because they can guarantee you that the color that you'll see
in the final print is *exactly* the same that you see in your own
printed color reference card. Try that in the GIMP, or in any other OS
design package. In general, conversion between different color models
is *tricky*, and you would be surprised at how precise our eyes are
with regards to small differences.

(I just read about Scribus, though, and about the color management
system that they're using there - littlecms - this is now being
integrated into GIMP. Don't know the results, but it's the right
step).

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: ca********@gmail.com
mail: ca********@yahoo.com