[Tkinter-discuss] Lots of widgets in a Text widget

[Bob Greschke]

I have a program that maintains a simple, on-the-fly database using a  
dictionary.  The user can see what is going on with it by brining up a  
toplevel with a Text() widget.  Checkbuttons and Entry fields are used  
to display the state of the items in the database (see picture).

www.passcal.nmt.edu/~bob/unlinked/images/showdb.tiff

The EN, AE, BR, etc. "flags" are the Checkbuttons and to the right of  
each TP, TO and ST label is an Entry field.  Each line is one seismic  
recording instrument which this program talks to.  From this 'form'  
the user can manually make changes to the state of each instrument by  
just clicking the flags or entering stuff in the fields.  The problem  
is when there are hundreds of instruments it starts to take a long  
time to open the form and fill it all in, scroll the form, and close  
the form and destroy all of those widgets.  Is there a faster way?   
Would putting all of this on a Canvas be faster?  I'd try it, but it  
would take a bit of messing just to do the experiment -- only to find  
out it's not faster, plus I'm not looking forward to counting pixels  
to get everything to line up.  This late-summer we will have an  
experiment with a few thousand instruments, so I'm lookin' for a  
solution. :)

Thanks!

Bob