Developer Forum

Redhat makes small standalone apps in Python and Glade, I think. You
can see some of the .py files for one tool for instance in RH9 in
/usr/share/redhat-config-nfs.

Is there anything easier than Python for implementing these sort of
things on Linux?

Not particularly. The only way of having something "easier" would be
to have some "application framework" expressly designed for your
specific application.

There certainly are other languages and toolkits that might be used;
none are likely to be particularly "easier."

You _might_ (and that's not certainty) discover that you'd need to use
C/C++ in order to extend the libraries in order to get more
sophisticated behaviour, but that's certainly not what you were asking
about.

Python is quite an attractive choice:

1. It supports strong data typing, unlike Perl/Tcl, which are
languages that "coerce" data into whatever type "appears
appropriate."

2. It has much simpler syntax than Perl, probably the most popular
near-alternative.

3. Like Perl/Tcl/Ruby/Lisp/Icon, there are excellent operations to
manipulate strings, and little need to set up detailed variable
definitions/allocations, as is the case in languages like C,
C++, Ada, and Java.

So yeah, you could do a LOT worse than Python + Glade.
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="acm.org" in String.concat "@" [name;tld];;
http://www.yqcomputer.com/
I've implemented a parser combinator library in Generic C#, and indeed
what is pretty clear in a functional language looks extremely
scientific in an object-oriented one. -- Peter Sestoft

I appreciate your opinion. Looks like Python + Glade it will need to
be and I'll just have to learn yet another language. Side note...I
noticed that on the newhire job requests for Google programmers that
they wanted people with Perl, Python, PHP, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
experience. I imagine the Python experience request is for this very
reason.

I finally spent about 8 hours teaching myself Python and Glade by
looking at the reference pages on the web, using the tools, and
looking at the RH9 .py and .glade files on my hard drive and seeing
how these work.

By the next day, I was able to build GUIs for Bash scripts, which is
about all I will need Python for. Python is a weird language, in my
opinion. It's also not well liked by the hundreds of Unix and Linux
gurus at my office. I'm like the noobie in the office to this stuff.

When I bragged about what I could do in a very short time, someone
said to me, "Dude, like why didn't you just leave it as a Bash script?
Why the GUI? You'll go much farther on Linux if you get used to living
at command line."

My thoughts, which I could never tell this person because he's high
up, was that I /CAN/ do many adequate and competent things at command
line. I've got some interesting Bash scripts already after just 2
years of messing with Linux. It's just that I'm going beyond that --
thinking about people who need to run my Bash script in the office and
who might have an aversion to command line.

An example is this. We have a tech hotline and the people there are
not Linux experienced. Occasionally I may have to guide them through
fixing something for me by the phone. If I have a GUI for a popular
Bash script I use, it permits the Linux experienced to do this task
without me having to connect in remotely via VPN over a very slow
dial-up connection.

So, anyway, I recommend anyone do what I did and consider the
advantages of using Python minimally in order to create GUIs that are
linked to Bash scripts.