Challenging python coders: Who can create a gnucash-like GUI in python in a few weeks?

[Christian Stimming]

Dear all,

We've been discussing various future directions for gnucash, including  
a switch to a different programming language for the GUI code [1]. GUI  
coding in C sucks. Because of this, I've experimented with C++/Qt and  
was able to write up a usable gnucash-like register window GUI in 2-3  
weeks which already includes features that are unavailable in  
"conventional gnucash" [2]. I chose C++/Qt because I'm very familiar  
and productive with that platform.

However, a scripting language might be even more suitable for writing  
the GUI code of a project like gnucash. The language Python is a  
particularly good candidate here because gnucash already has python  
wrappers for most of its underlying data type and storage code,  
thankfully provided by Mike Evans and others. See  
src/optional/python-bindings/ and the doxygen output [3] and the  
example scripts in python-bindings/example_scripts/, in particular  
scripts like simple_book.py: Loading an existing file, modifying some  
of the data, and writing again, all in 12 lines.

Here's my challenge to coders who *are* familiar with GUI coding in  
python (because I'm not): Who of you is able to write up some python  
code that creates a gnucash-like GUI, using the existing python  
wrappers to re-use the data store of normal gnucash, but your python  
code is at least a thousand times more elegant than the previous code?  
And you won't need more than 1-2 weeks to achieve something where we  
can view our data files and enter new transactions, will you? I was  
able to do this in C++/Qt in four weeks; are you able to do it in  
python in two?

If your results are convincing, I will join. I am extremely curious to  
see how python can drive the GUI of a large application like gnucash.  
I experimented in one direction; now I want to learn about other  
possible directions. In case the results turn out unconvincing - well,  
you cannot loose more than a little bit of time and we will all have  
learnt something about the potentials and limitations here. But if you  
achieve something convincing, you will of course gain unlimited  
bragging rights that python "is the language of choice for  
discriminating hackers..." [4]

And now, let the coding begin!

Best Regards,

Christian

[1]  
http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2010-December/030516.html and  
thread
[2] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Cutecash
[3] http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/HEAD/python_bindings_page.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICFP_Programming_Contest#Prizes