Is Java the only real way of doing cross-platform GUI

Basu · 2009-10-19 02:54:38

I'm planning a project that will involve some GUI-centric work (its essentially a spreadsheet with some functional programming features). I want to have it be cross platform because I would like to build it as a tool for first time programmers. I haven't really done much GUI programming before but from what experience I have, it seems that the JVM with Swing is the the least painful for the user. I've had some experience with Python, but can't find something that works equally well on all platforms without the user installing a lot of stuff. I've also considered going the JavaScript+browser route, but that's not something I'd like to tackle. Any other ideas?

iza · 2009-10-19 03:33:55

wxWidgets?

Last edited by iza (2009-10-19 03:47:03)

Dusty · 2009-10-19 04:52:21

JVM with swing is the most painful for the programmer.

You've already explored these, but I'll suggest them anyway:

wxPython really isn't that hard to distribute. On Linux, the package is available for major distros, and for Windows and Mac you can make binaries that bundle it.

I mostly write Javascript + browser these days because I think that's the way things are going in the future. But I hate Javascript... hopefully Python + browser is not so very far away. I know the PyPy guys had been experimenting with sandboxing python and plugging it into webkit.

If you want to go with Swing, but avoid programming Java, you can use Jython + Swing. It's not a hard dependency to ship, and Jython works seamlessly with Java classes.

Remember: By coding in Python instead of Java, you can save enough coding time to spend extra time at the end of your project figuring out how to deploy it seamlessly on different platforms.

Dusty

archlinuxsagi · 2009-10-19 05:03:13

QT and GTK

blakeman8192 · 2009-10-19 05:17:13

In my opinion, Swing is pretty easy to program with, and very flexible (naturally, due to its highly object oriented nature).
I'd recommend going with Java, but my opinion is biased since I myself have quite a bit of experience programming with Java.

dalingrin · 2009-10-19 14:57:25

I think Qt is currently the best cross platform gui toolkit. Especially if you care about speed and effortless native look.

Basu · 2009-10-19 16:27:05

Thanks for your input. Just to clarify a few things: Though I said JVM + Swing, I don't mean that I'll actually be programming in Java. I plan on using Jython or Scala (if I think I have the time to learn it). Java isn't a bad language, but there are things that I've gotten used to in other languages that I would like to have. I'll look a bit more into distributing wxPython on Mac and Windows and see if simple enough.
Please keep the suggestions coming

Zeist · 2009-10-19 16:33:55

dalingrin wrote:

I think Qt is currently the best cross platform gui toolkit. Especially if you care about speed and effortless native look.

I am also of this opinion.

jdhore · 2009-10-19 20:53:33

I recommended GTK and Glib for cross-platform GUI coding. GTK is available on all 3 major platforms (and the BSD's, Solaris, etc) and Glib makes coding easy because if you use gint or gchar (for example) instead of int or char, Glib will automagically make all that stuff work with whatever platform its being compiled on.

sctincman · 2009-10-20 00:10:47

If you're going with Python, why not look into Tk? I think most python packages come with Tkinter compiled it, which would satisfy the cross platform requirement (I know bkchem uses it for this purpose). The only downside is I think Tk is kind of ugly :/

Last edited by sctincman (2009-10-20 00:17:56)

dalingrin · 2009-10-20 00:12:08

FYI, there are multiple Python bindings for Qt. If you are not going to be programming in Java then I certainly would go with something else for the GUI toolkit. I mean, not many people would choose
Swing over another toolkit if they are not locked into Java.
Qt was specifically designed to provide extremely simple cross platform portability.

Ranguvar · 2009-10-20 01:29:26

sctincman wrote:

If you're going with Python, why not look into Tk? I think most python packages come with Tkinter compiled it, which would satisfy the cross platform requirement (I know bkchem uses it for this purpose). The only downside is I think Tk is kind of ugly

Yeah, I haven't heard of any ways to make Tk look like anything but Motif ran over by a giant steamroller.

I think Qt is probably overall the best. Java has both SWT and Swing, which work pretty well, and GTK+ is fairly cross-platform, but Qt is the gold standard here. wxWidgets was also recommended, that's worth a look, it's what Firefox uses. It does Win32 and GTK+ styling very well.

Basu · 2009-10-20 02:47:26

I've used Python with PyQt a bit and I quite like, but it seems like a bit of pain to install it in Windows or OS X. Ideally I would like to be able to give users a single file (or a single directory) which they can just click and run without having to install a bunch of frameworks first. Hence the Jython/Scala with Swing idea since I could build a .jar and let it loose.

Ranguvar · 2009-10-20 03:03:19

Basu wrote:

I've used Python with PyQt a bit and I quite like, but it seems like a bit of pain to install it in Windows or OS X. Ideally I would like to be able to give users a single file (or a single directory) which they can just click and run without having to install a bunch of frameworks first. Hence the Jython/Scala with Swing idea since I could build a .jar and let it loose.

It's called static linking, and it's the norm on Windoze We GNU/Linux users just have this awesome package management system, so we can use 1337 dynamic linking. Easy to get used to, ain't it?

Squall90 · 2009-10-20 14:12:42

Basu wrote:

I've used Python with PyQt a bit and I quite like, but it seems like a bit of pain to install it in Windows or OS X. Ideally I would like to be able to give users a single file (or a single directory) which they can just click and run without having to install a bunch of frameworks first. Hence the Jython/Scala with Swing idea since I could build a .jar and let it loose.

You could realize it with C++ and QT. But therefore you have to compile Qt and your program statically.
Btw: I don't know if you can compile your programs with other programming languages than C++ statically.

Last edited by Squall90 (2009-10-20 14:14:13)

Trent · 2009-10-20 15:28:51

Just about anything can be statically linked. You can even statically link Python and Perl scripts with the interpreter and all the needed libraries, although that would of course hog lots and lots of space that probably isn't necessary. Compiled languages like C and C++ are the best options for static linking imo.

I find it contradictory that you want "to give users a single file [that] they can just click and run without having to install a bunch of frameworks first", and immediately turn to Java. Java is not universal, and it's a significantly large framework to have to install just to run one program. I can write a GUI program with Python and Tkinter and tell Windows users to install Python first; it's the same thing as compiling a .jar and telling Windows users to install Java first. If you really just want a click-and-run executable, then your only option (for Windows) is a statically linked .exe.

ngoonee · 2009-10-21 04:42:09

Trent wrote:

Just about anything can be statically linked. You can even statically link Python and Perl scripts with the interpreter and all the needed libraries, although that would of course hog lots and lots of space that probably isn't necessary. Compiled languages like C and C++ are the best options for static linking imo.
I find it contradictory that you want "to give users a single file [that] they can just click and run without having to install a bunch of frameworks first", and immediately turn to Java. Java is not universal, and it's a significantly large framework to have to install just to run one program. I can write a GUI program with Python and Tkinter and tell Windows users to install Python first; it's the same thing as compiling a .jar and telling Windows users to install Java first. If you really just want a click-and-run executable, then your only option (for Windows) is a statically linked .exe.

Difference being that most probably the user already has java, since more and more webpages require it to run.

SamC · 2009-10-21 04:48:01

Ngoonee: Really? I don't have Java installed on any of my machines. You never seem to run into it, especially with the increasing possibilities with Javascript.

the_isz · 2009-10-21 05:43:02

Just wanted to add a tiny thing:

You can also link Qt dynamically and just ship the necessary binaries along with
the executable. Finding out the necessary binaries for windows is easy when
using dependency walker (www.dependencywalker.com).
For linux, you can just make Qt a dependency of the package with which you
distribute your program.

Mr.Elendig · 2009-10-21 22:02:43

Basu wrote:

I've used Python with PyQt a bit and I quite like, but it seems like a bit of pain to install it in Windows or OS X. Ideally I would like to be able to give users a single file (or a single directory) which they can just click and run without having to install a bunch of frameworks first. Hence the Jython/Scala with Swing idea since I could build a .jar and let it loose.

You could simply ship the qt libs your app needs with your application? look at py2exe and similar.

Edit: I always try to stay the heck away from java apps. 99% of them don't play well along with my window managers.

Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2009-10-21 22:04:10)

deadlylife · 2009-10-24 02:58:08

Adobe Air, but Arch support is hackish

Ranguvar · 2009-10-24 03:44:02

Mr.Elendig wrote:

I always try to stay the heck away from java apps. 99% of them don't play well along with my window managers.

Would this help? It doesn't matter whether or not you use Awesome or another WM. The OpenJDK in the repos should already work fine, it's the normal JRE that is stupid.

[/offtopic]

some-guy94 · 2009-10-24 03:52:29

Ranguvar wrote:

wxWidgets was also recommended, that's worth a look, it's what Firefox uses. It does Win32 and GTK+ styling very well.

Firefox uses XUL, also wxWidgets doesn't emulate styling like XUL, it uses another toolkit for actually doing stuff.

iBertus · 2009-10-24 04:44:52

+1 for wxPython. I've used it along with matplotlib to develop a few graphical tools to analyze groundwater data that were required to run on Windows and Linux.

-1 to Java anything. I personally dislike all things Java.

Mr.Elendig · 2009-10-24 11:07:15

Ranguvar wrote:

Mr.Elendig wrote:
I always try to stay the heck away from java apps. 99% of them don't play well along with my window managers.
Would this help? It doesn't matter whether or not you use Awesome or another WM. The OpenJDK in the repos should already work fine, it's the normal JRE that is stupid.
[/offtopic]

I know all about changing the toolkit, lying about what wm you are using and so on. But they don't always work, and many hava apps takes badly to being forced into a size, either buttons and text gets hidden instead of resizing, or they just crash.

But enough about that.qt is good looking, somewhat easy to use (and write), and it's multi platform.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-19 02:54:38

Is Java the only real way of doing cross-platform GUI

#2 2009-10-19 03:33:55

Re: Is Java the only real way of doing cross-platform GUI

#3 2009-10-19 04:52:21

Re: Is Java the only real way of doing cross-platform GUI

#4 2009-10-19 05:03:13

Re: Is Java the only real way of doing cross-platform GUI

#5 2009-10-19 05:17:13

Re: Is Java the only real way of doing cross-platform GUI

#6 2009-10-19 14:57:25

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#7 2009-10-19 16:27:05

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#8 2009-10-19 16:33:55

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#9 2009-10-19 20:53:33

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#10 2009-10-20 00:10:47

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#11 2009-10-20 00:12:08

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#12 2009-10-20 01:29:26

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#13 2009-10-20 02:47:26

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#15 2009-10-20 14:12:42

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#16 2009-10-20 15:28:51

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#17 2009-10-21 04:42:09

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#18 2009-10-21 04:48:01

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#20 2009-10-21 22:02:43

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#21 2009-10-24 02:58:08

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#22 2009-10-24 03:44:02

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#23 2009-10-24 03:52:29

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#24 2009-10-24 04:44:52

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#25 2009-10-24 11:07:15

Re: Is Java the only real way of doing cross-platform GUI

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