one other point ' like to make right awaymost guis are dynamic and interactive interfacesand the best can do here is show static screenshots representing selected states in the interactions such programs implement this really won' do justice to most examples if you are not working along with the examples alreadyi encourage you to run the gui examples in this and later on your own on windowsthe standard python install comes with tkinter support built inso all these examples should work immediately mac os comes bundled with tkinteraware python as well for other systemspythons with tkinter support are either provided with the system itself or are readily available (see the top-level readme-pp txt file in the book examples distribution for more detailsgetting tkinter to work on your computer is worth whatever extra install details you may need to absorbthoughexperimenting with these programs is great way to learn about both gui programming and python itself also see the description of book example portability in general in this book' preface although python and tkinter are both largely platform neutralyou may run into some minor platform-specific issues if you try to run this book' examples on platforms other than that used to develop this book mac os xfor examplemight pose subtle differences in some of the examplesoperation be sure to watch this book' website for pointers and possible future patches for using the examples on other platforms has anyone noticed that - - are the first three letters of "guido"python creator guido van rossum didn' originally set out to build gui development toolbut python' ease of use and rapid turnaround have made this one of its primary roles from an implementation perspectiveguis in python are really just instances of extensionsand extensibility was one of the main ideas behind python when script builds push buttons and menusit ultimately talks to libraryand when script responds to user eventa library ultimately talks back to python it' really just an example of what is possible when python is used to script external libraries but from practical point of viewguis are critical part of modern systems and an ideal domain for tool like python as we'll seepython' simple syntax and objectoriented flavor blend well with the gui model--it' natural to represent each device drawn on screen as python class moreoverpython' quick turnaround lets programmers experiment with alternative layouts and behavior rapidlyin ways not possible with traditional development techniques in factyou can usually make change to python-based gui and observe its effects in matter of seconds don' try this with ++"here' looking at youkid