DUducktective·Sep 11, 2022Submission
Declarative GUI with constraints-based layout engine for Python
120 points · Open discussionnucleic
enaml
Python2014–2022
nucleic / enaml
enaml
Declarative User Interfaces for Python
8Distinct people
12Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
1.6KGitHub stars
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What it is
Declarative User Interfaces for Python
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
TraitsUI was a cool idea, but not implemented that well. Enaml carries it to perfection. I love how enaml provides a ton of functionality, while it doesnt get in the way of…
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year12 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-04-16 23:37:42 UTC to 2022-09-11 12:50:19 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
12 sourcesSomething like this - https://github.com/nucleic/enaml#dock-item-alerts - this is a Python UI that has the capability (extended through Qt)
In Advice for the next dozen Rust GUIsEnaml: Declarative User Interfaces for Python
4 points · Open discussionEnaml: Declarative User Interfaces for Python
2 points · Open discussionEnaml (https://github.com/nucleic/enaml) is a declarative component-based GUI library for Python that more or less has the same driving philosophy and feel of React. There's even a (parallel project) Enaml-web.
In Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use themhttps://github.com/nucleic/enaml
We're just starting. IMO, if we started from a better language than JS, we would take stuff like data-binding in react for Granted, since it would be much easier to this stuff it in other languages.
In Make front end shit againDocking has improved too: https://wiki.qt.io/New_Features_in_Qt_5.6
- Allow programmatic resizing of dock widgets
- Allow dropping dock widgets into floating docks
- Allow the user to re-arrange tabified docks
I haven't tried it out yet, or seen a demo, but in my previous company we spent some time finding out a solution for docking that mimicks to a degree what Visual Studio did, and we somehow did it, but it's not as good still as Visual Studio.
It was very important for the artists/level builders/scripters to be able to use 3 monitors efficiently (something that the browser lacks in general), and a window spread on three of them is not what they needed.
They really wanted one monitor with say the level (3d map), another monitor would have all assets for preview/selecting, and a third one for additional debugging.
Then when you c
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lose, and open again the app it should remember the positions, sizes, etc.
Autodesk Maya/MotionBuilder uses Qt, so if they switch to this version they'll benefit from it.
As an alternative solution, but only in Python (PyQt, PySide) land, there is https://github.com/nucleic/enaml
http://nucleic.github.io/enaml/docs/examples/ex_dock_area.ht...
It's beautiful!
For python + qt version check enaml - https://github.com/nucleic/enaml - it was posted here from 28 days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677375
In Cassowary – A Constraint Solving ToolkitTraitsUI was a cool idea, but not implemented that well. Enaml carries it to perfection. I love how enaml provides a ton of functionality, while it doesnt get in the way of experimentation. Just see the matplotlib widget [1] how easy it is to integrate other widgets.
[1] https://github.com/nucleic/enaml/blob/master/enaml/widgets/m...
In Enaml: A declarative UI library with a Cassowary layout system for PythonEnaml: A declarative UI library with a Cassowary layout system for Python
52 points · Open discussionAnother toolkit that uses Python, but with Qt (and previously also wxWidgets) is enaml - it has a cassowary solver, a Visual Studio docking system, and very interesting approach to connecting that to visual elements.
https://github.com/nucleic/enaml
http://nucleic.github.io/enaml/docs/
In Toga: A Python native, OS native GUI toolkitIf you are fully in python, then please take a look at http://github.com/nucleic/enaml - it requires few extra modules (kiwi in C++ which is cassowary constraint system for UI widgets), and atom (python + C++):
But it has exactly what Visual Studio has, and a bit more:
http://nucleic.github.io/enaml/docs/examples/ex_dock_area.ht...
I've started porting this system to C++, but gave up after realizing how much I had to do (spent a week on it, and couldn't do more).
I've chose a much simpler (again written in python) system that has some missing features (does not keep proportions, and it's not visually that appealing) - but it works in general.
It's part of http://github/pyqtgraph/pyqtgraph
Example for Pyqtgraph - http://www.pyqtgraph.org/images/flowchart.png
I have translated this one, except that my (C++ ported) version is currently leaki
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ng memory, which eventually would get fixed.
Hope this helps!