webview.start gui kwarg seems mostly redundant

[adamlwgriffiths]

Looking at the code in guilib.py, it seems that the gui kwarg is almost entirely supefluous with the exception of prioritising gtk/qt

The check on line 72 shows a large list of what values are acceptable.
But the per-platform checks below only honor qt/gtk on some platforms.

Is there something I'm not grokking?

[r0x0r]

Do you mean forced_gui kwarg? If so, its purpose is to force a specific renderer trumping over the default renderer choice. If the forced renderer is not available it defaults to what is available.

[adamlwgriffiths]

Starting with an example

1. A call is made to webview.start(gui)
2. Which in turn calls guilib.initialize(gui)
3. gui is assigned to forced_gui and forced_gui is then validated against a list of acceptable gui options
4. This then used per platform
   4a. Darwin only honors forced_gui if its qt.
   4b. Linux only honors forced_gui if its qt.
   4c. Windows ignores forced_gui

Unless I've missed something, It looks like its really not doing much of anything, except putting qt at the front of the list of [qt, gtk] on Darwin/Linux.
All other options are ignored.

[r0x0r]

Yes you are right that is used only for forcing QT. However if you look at winforms.py the same parameter is used for choosing a renderer, even though WinForms is used in any case.

[adamlwgriffiths]

Ah ok, I see what's going on.
forced_gui_ is a global, that the other platforms then reach into to use.
I didn't see that connection there.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.