Ubuntu – Is PyGTK still relevant

Okay, this is going to be step by step:

• Our widget is going to be named AwesomeTextView, the module it's in will be called awesome_text_view. These are the only names we need.

A glade widget consists of two parts, the module and the catalog.

1. We create a catalog, awesome_text_view.xml, and (as root) save it at /usr/share/glade3/catalogs/

   This is what it looks like:

   <glade-catalog name="awesome_text_view"
       library="gladepython"
       domain="glade-3"
       depends="gtk+">
   
    <init-function>glade_python_init</init-function>
   
    <glade-widget-classes>
      <glade-widget-class title="Awesome TextView"
       name="AwesomeTextView"
       generic-name="awesome_text_view"/>
    </glade-widget-classes>
   
    <glade-widget-group name="python" title="Python">
      <glade-widget-class-ref name="AwesomeTextView"/>
    </glade-widget-group>
   </glade-catalog>
   

   You should copy and adapt this template, as it works. :-)

2. We create a module, awesome_text_view.py, and (again as root) save it at /usr/lib/glade3/modules/

   Here's what that looks like:

   import gobject
   import gtk
   import pango
   
   
   class AwesomeTextView (gtk.TextView):
   
       __gtype_name__ = 'AwesomeTextView'
   
       def __init__(self):
           gtk.TextView.__init__(self)
   
       def set_font(self, font_description):
           self.modify_font(pango.FontDescription(font_description))
   

   It's now displayed in Glade, and you can add it to your application.

3. Finally, you'll just need to

       export PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:/usr/lib/glade3/modules/"
   

That's it!

Here's a little test app showing how to use your widget:

import gtk
import awesome_text_view

class App (object):

    builder = gtk.Builder()

    def __init__(self):
        self.builder.add_from_file("test.glade")
        self.builder.connect_signals(self)
        self.builder.get_object("awesome_text_view1").set_font("mono")
        gtk.main()

    def on_window1_destroy(self, widget):
        gtk.main_quit()


App()

I'll try to answer your questions, without going in crazy directions.

1. They are significantly different, even though they are both widget libs. Regular GTK+ is based on C, and QT on C++. Although bindings exist for almost every programming languages.

2. You are fairly correct about GTK2, although there are so many GTK2 applications. I expect GTK2 to be in use for a while, just as GTK1 was. When push comes to shove, GTK2 is deprecated, and if you are starting fresh go GTK3.

3. Remeber GTK, and QT, are just widget toolkits. For example... Gnome applications, use GTK and also the Gnome-Libs. If you want that, take a look at vala. It is considered simple, the vala compiles source-to-source directly to C, and has full bindings for many programming languages. You might also want to look at Anjuta, just make sure you have the new gtk3 versions. Apparently strait PyGTK only supports GTK2, current last I checked. If you are looking to avoid all Linux DE libs, I would suggest looking at QT. Plain QT is different from KDE applications, which include KDE libs. QT is considered very cross-platform, which is cool if you want to compile for non *nix. If you want to get started with QT + Python, look at PySide (LGPL) or PyQT (GPL). QT has some good GUI builders like qt creator, and qt-designer.