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Making GUIs, how do you pick? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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Sorry for the somewhat noob question, but how do you pick a library for making a GUI for your apps? My background is in physics, so most of my programming is perfectly find with a CLI that outputs a graph as a ps file or some csv. I am looking to learn about making some neat little GUIs. I was thinking it would be a good idea to try and build my GUI out of the browser so that my app can be as portable as possible, but does this mean it has to be in Javascript or can the backend be done in anything else?

I am not really sure what I am asking, but wanted to get a feel for how people approach front ends.

Thanks :)

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[–] mox@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I don't enjoy writing in Tcl. If I were to use Tk today, it would probably be through Python's tkinter package.

IMHO, Tk interfaces look awful by default, but they can be made to look pretty decent if you're willing to hunt for (or create) a good theme. I have considered it a couple of times for trivial tool UIs, and I occasionally use one that someone else wrote.

That said, getting it to look native on multiple platforms would take more effort than I feel is worthwhile, and getting it to feel native (keyboard nav, etc.) even more so. Qt has this stuff built in, and a lot more.