Why no maintained wrapper to Win32?

[Gilles Ganault]

Hello

It looks like the development of the PyWin32 wrapper to the
Win32 API stopped years ago, which is too bad because it means that
writing GUI apps in Python even just for Windows means adding
megabytes when using eg. wxWidgets.

How come no one too over this project, or offered another wrapper? Or
even better, why no company offered a RAD IDE so that we could write
GUI apps in Python for Windows? It's such a waste not being apple to
just send someone a small EXE.

Thanks.

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Martin_v=2E_L=F6wis=22?=]

It looks like the development of the PyWin32 wrapper to the

Win32 API stopped years ago, which is too bad because it means that
writing GUI apps in Python even just for Windows means adding
megabytes when using eg. wxWidgets.

Why does it mean that? The Win32 APIs for GUI are up-to-date; they
don't need further development. Win32 itself stopped years ago.
You can write GUI applications with PyWin32 just fine.

Regards,
Martin

[sturlamolden]

On Jul 30, 6:07 am, Gilles Ganault <[e-mail]:

For people who don't konw the Win32 API and don't know C... is the
O'Reilly book above the best source of information on how to write
Win32 GUI apps in Python?

Why inflict suffering on yourself with MFC when you can use wxPython
or PyGTK?

Sure, you could use ctypes to make calls into user32.dll, gdi32.dll
and kernel32.dll. Then you can program Python GUIs using the plain
Win32 API, avoiding PyWin32's MFC or wxPython. But who would do such a
thing?

[Gilles Ganault]

On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 21:49:04 -0700, sturlamolden
<st**********@yahoo.nowrote:

>Why inflict suffering on yourself with MFC when you can use wxPython
or PyGTK?

Because I'd like to avoid having to pack several MB + having to
install the toolkit. Considering the size of the typical Python
script, it seemed overkill.

>Sure, you could use ctypes to make calls into user32.dll, gdi32.dll
and kernel32.dll. Then you can program Python GUIs using the plain
Win32 API, avoiding PyWin32's MFC or wxPython. But who would do such a
thing?

So the PyWin32 interface doesn't make it easier to program Win32 GUI
apps? It's just C that looks like Python?

Guess I have the answer as to no one seems to write GUI apps for
Windows natively :-)

Thanks.

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Martin_v=2E_L=F6wis=22?=]

Guess I have the answer as to no one seems to write GUI apps for

Windows natively :-)

That's certainly an important factor. If I wanted to ship a small
application, I would write a web server, and run that locally.
GUI programming is so last-century :-)

Regards,
Martin

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Gilles Ganault a écrit :

On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 21:49:04 -0700, sturlamolden
<st**********@yahoo.nowrote:

>Why inflict suffering on yourself with MFC when you can use wxPython
or PyGTK?

Because I'd like to avoid having to pack several MB + having to
install the toolkit. Considering the size of the typical Python
script, it seemed overkill.

>Sure, you could use ctypes to make calls into user32.dll, gdi32.dll
and kernel32.dll. Then you can program Python GUIs using the plain
Win32 API, avoiding PyWin32's MFC or wxPython. But who would do such a
thing?

So the PyWin32 interface doesn't make it easier to program Win32 GUI
apps?

Did you ever tried writing a Win32 GUI app in C ?-)

But you should re-read the above more carefully. What I do understand
from it is that PyWin32 adds support for the MFC toolkit (nb: didn't
check myself since I'm not concerned...).

It's just C that looks like Python?

Guess I have the answer as to no one seems to write GUI apps for
Windows natively :-)

Fact is that either the app is a small, casual tool, and then Tkinter is
quite enough, or it's a real, fullblown app and then better to use a
decent (and, if possible, crossplatform) toolkit - like, you know,
wxWidgets !-)

[sturlamolden]

On Jul 31, 4:35 am, Gilles Ganault <[e-mail]:

Because I'd like to avoid having to pack several MB + having to
install the toolkit. Considering the size of the typical Python
script, it seemed overkill.

But you are happy to pack a Python runtime and PyWin32? This is really
a dumb argument.

Sure, you could use ctypes to make calls into user32.dll, gdi32.dll
and kernel32.dll. Then you can program Python GUIs using the plain
Win32 API, avoiding PyWin32's MFC or wxPython. But who would do such a
thing?

So the PyWin32 interface doesn't make it easier to program Win32 GUI
apps? It's just C that looks like Python?

PyWin32 wraps MFC, which is a C++ library for Windows (and Motif) GUI
programming. It is not more 'native' than wxPython. MFC and wxWidgets
does the same job, except that wxWidgets does it better.

PyWin32 does not expose the GUI parts of the 'native' Win32 API
directly. You will have to use ctypes to access that directly.

Guess I have the answer as to no one seems to write GUI apps for
Windows natively :-)

wxPyhton is 'native' enough. Is uses native widgets on Windows (unlike
Qt, GTK and tk).