Investigate Alternative to GUI framework

[FedorSteeman]

The new GUI framework must , as a minimum, have the following capabilities:

• [x] List elements need to allow for arrow keys to be used for navigation. And entries selected in that manner ought to be submitted by pressing ENTER. Both Pythonwx and PySimpleGui allow this, though not in an 'out of the box' manner.
• [x] The option of placing elements (text, boxes, buttons, etc.) in specific places which are determined by the DaSSCo team.
• [x] Dynamically add controls to the window during runtime
• [x] Laying out the app according to the final design should not require reams of code. I would be content with a coordinate system which allows absolute placement.
• [ ] Proper Dropdownlists filled with a key value tuples list, so I don't need to fetch the primary key based on name string ~- [ ] Possibility for modular design, so different parts of the UI can reside in separate files. This would help when working on a particular UI form at the same time.~
• [ ] Autosuggest list as overlay rather than popup

[FedorSteeman]

As for some additional considerations:

• [ ] Possibility for modular design, so different parts of the UI can reside in separate files. This would help when working on a particular UI form at the same time.

[FedorSteeman]

Kim mentioned PySide as a possible option: https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_for_Python

[FedorSteeman]

@jlegind I'd like some proper dropdownlists instead of the current comboboxes. It should not be made possible to write new entries in the field! And also, I would like the contents of the dropdownlist to be key-value tuples, so we don't need to check the db for the primary key.

[jlegind]

Intermezzo: If we decide to change GUI framework midstream, then I lean towards Pythonwx. This is partly due to the license which is Library General Public Licence . The major restriction here is that software built with wx must be open source, which I believe we have already committed to. Wx can do list boxes with up/down arrow navigation and Enter/Return submissions. It remains to be investigated how well Wx does layout.

[FedorSteeman]

@jlegind Could you make a tiny test app in wxPython to demonstrate how we can work with its controls, especially list-based ones?

[FedorSteeman]

Put on hold depending on outcome of #136 and #95

[PipBrewer]

As we have already done some investigation on this, could we not put the results of that here for future reference @FedorSteeman @jlegind ?

[FedorSteeman]

Yes, and Jan mainly did this investigation. However, I also don't want to spend too much time on this right now. If we can get a functional and intuitive pop-up out-of-the-box with the current framework, I still need more reasons for the shift.

[FedorSteeman]

We may yet consider this one: https://www.qt.io/qt-for-python

[jlegind]

UPDATE: Bhupjit and I have investigated web solutions that will be running locally. The framework FastAPI shows promise and the front end can be HTML and that gives us unprecedented control over the look and feel of the app UI. Advantages:

• Can run on all platforms with a standard installation for each of them.
• Paves the way for a future version that runs on a webserver remotely.
• It has been adopted by some pretty big players.

Disadvantages:

• Runs on a browser
• Could mean slower response time?
• We would have to manage browser differences (rendering HTML and CSS)

I still firmly believe that the upsides outweigh the downsides.