[pygtk] Improving pygtk appearance, or moving to wxPython?

[Andrew Conkling]

On 5/3/06, JUAN ERNESTO FLORES BELTRAN <juanernestof at hotmail.com> wrote:
> well, i entered at http://art.gnome.org there is a lot of "themes" them all
> look great!!...however i still don´t understand the "theme" philosophy.
>
> It seems a collection of widgets/icons which are going to help you develop
> the GUI by installing them somwhere in you computer?? am i rigth??

This may help; it gives an overview of themes in general:
http://developer.gnome.org/arch/gtk/themes.html

> On the other hand i entered at http://cairographics.org/pycairo which
> explains some drawing, but i still don´t understand how to improve mi
> application...should i install a "theme" or do i have to do all the drawing
> it requires by using cairo??...what i really need is better appeareance
> widgets...

Then you need to install a good theme. :)  Your distro, assuming
you're using a major one, should come with a good selection already. 
See your environment's instructions for changing them, or if you're
just running a WM, see the link above. :)

The end result is this: you'll implement (for example) a button.  You
won't tell it how to look; you'll just tell it that it goes in a
frame, in a gtk.Notebook, in a window.  When you run your shiny new
PyGTK+ app, GTK+ will draw it for whatever your theme is.  When *I*
run it, it will draw for whatever my theme is (Clearlooks, in this
case).

This makes the programming much easier, because the hard work (mostly)
is done.  You just have to design, place, and act on the widgets.  It
also makes everything look better and more unified.  As an opposing
example, take MS Windows/Office: XP looks different than 2000, they're
not even (easily) themeable, and each version of Office looks
different than the last, and different from the rest of Windows.

I hope this helps to clarify; keep asking questions!

Cheers,
Andrew