Mailman 3 May 2005 - Tkinter-discuss

tk 8.3 and unicode
by Martin Franklin June 1, 2005

June 1, 2005

Hi all, Another possibly silly question..... My prodcution machines are stuck at python2.2 and tk 8.3 and *I* have a problem with the following code:- import codecs import Tkinter root=Tkinter.Tk() var = Tkinter.StringVar() e = Tkinter.Entry(root, textvariable=var) e.pack() var.set(u"\xa3 \xa3") #~ f = codecs.open("ce.tst", "w", "utf-8") #~ f.write(var.get()) #~ f.close() print repr(var.get()) root.mainloop() The GUI shows up and is correct, however when I un-comment the three save to file lines it fails with: UnicodeError: ASCII decoding error: ordinal not in range(128) Indeed when I look at the printed output from the code is shows:- '\xc2\xa3 \xc2\xa3' rather than what I put into that variable..... I assume this is a feature of tk 8.3 - i've tested on py2.3+tk8.4 and py2.4+tk8.5 and both those version *just work* is there any get around? Cheers Martin

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Re: [Tkinter-discuss] gui/thread issues
by David King May 25, 2005

May 25, 2005

>>>>David King wrote [private note, not a previous thread]: David> Dear Prabhu: I noticed a forum thread discussing gui David> threading, e.g.: David> http://www.scipy.net/pipermail/ipython-dev/2004-November/000299.html David> I'm asking you to have mercy on a fairly new python user. David> I want to use Tkinter and still have the python console David> remain 'live'. I have the impression you have gone far David> more deeply into this than I, and that others as well have David> thought on it. Yet I still have no solid doc on when David> tk.mainloop() is necessary and when not, on how to process David> Tkinter events while the python interpreter remains active David> to input. I have prowled around fairly extensively in a David> (so-far) vain search for the definitive answer to this. Prabhu Ramachandran wrote: > The answer strongly depends on what particular Python interpreter you > are using. Under IPython (without -wthread or -gthread) or vanilla > Python, tk.mainloop() is not necessary and in fact should not be > called if you want the console active. Even if you do not call the > mainloop, events will still be processed and your application will work > just fine. > > However, if you are running apps written with pyGTK or wxPython then > you can't get away with running a Tkinter app and not calling > mainloop. With IPython, there is an option (-wthread/-gthread) that > starts up the GTK and wx mainloops in a secondary thread and allows > for an interactive console on the main thread. In this case, if you > start a Tkinter application, it will in all probability not work. > This is because GTK and wx have their own event handling loops that do > not play nicely with the Tkinter event loop in another thread. To get > around this, IPython also provides a -tk flag that processes tk events > every so often. Now this works best only if tkinter is compiled with > thread support, if not things break badly. > > With the IDLE interpreter things are different since IDLE itself > starts the mainloop and recent versions of IDLE have some issues and > you might want to read this thread: > > http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/edu-sig/1818398 > > > I hope I have answered the question clearly enough and not confused > you any more. Dear Prabhu: Thanks you very much for your note regarding Python-gui interaction; very kind of you. Some of what I've read on the net does add to my confusion, but definitely _not_ your reply; it is helping me piece things together. In the short run, I would be ok just using Tk alone on IPython or plain Python, although I'd be happiest having the whole picture. In the long run, our project will want to serve varied users, who will no doubt want to use python in their own way. Russell Owen also mentioned that Tkinter's 'after[_idle]' might not work without calling mainloop() explicitly; although perhaps I can do without those features, I'd certainly like to know if this is the case, and what else to watch out for of this sort.... I will continue to study what I have (that forum-thread link was helpful too--thanks). But I can't help feeling other python gui programmers must run up against this problem too, and wonder why practically all the standard Tkinter doc (including Grayson's book) just says "you gotta call mainloop() to make anything actually appear and respond in Tkinter" (manifestly untrue). I'm beginning to suspect that although the information I seek resides in various people's heads, noone has written a real overview of gui event loop/threading issues, with simple pictures of what is going on, the various cases known to work or not work, and guidance on how to write the most generally usable gui apps in python while keeping the interpreter 'alive'. Ideally, I'd like to see an overview considering all the cases: - Tkinter, wx, GTK - plain python, IPython, IDLE - IPython -wthread -gthread and -tk flags - compiling Tkinter with/without thread support Perhaps when I'm done with my researches I'll write such an article myself... :-). Meanwhile, any other pointers or good clues you can give would certainly be welcome. There are also some intriguing comments in _tkinter.c on threading; my 'ideal guithreads article' would also provide an overview of that code, as an aid in reading it. (I will be dwelling on thc C/C++ side as well in my project. FYI, I am trying to port a C++ library that displays our in-house types of (astronomical) data, so that it can operate under python control. As currently used, it is already a custom Tk widget (outside of Tkinter/python), and has a command interface as well (via a home-grown inter-process communication framework), so that it is controlled through both mouse and scripting. I want to replace the current command interface with python scripting). As a concrete question, may I ask you how to tell if 'tkinter is compiled with thread support'? (I note that a 'test_threading' passed in the 'make test' log for my python; I presume that if threading was on for my python build, it was on for building _tkinter.so...(?)) Anyway, thanks again for your help; I hope I haven't taken too much of your time. Regards, David King

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Hooking into custom Tcl/Tk Widgets
by David King May 13, 2005

May 13, 2005

Hi Folks: I am looking to make a custom Tcl/Tk widget available in Tkinter. It is written in C/C++ and does graphics rendering of some custom astronomical data formats. It has previously been driven stand-alone from a C++ program, without benefit of python (i.e., the Tcl/Tk interpreter and its event loop are currently created / run from the top level of a C++ program). I now want to do most of the fancier control GUI creation from python/Tkinter, and embed the widget within that. I will need somehow to send the widget various custom commands to control it from python. Probably even harder, I will need to hook callbacks into various custom 'events' generated by the widget, and process them in python. Guidance / doc pointers covering any of these issues will be welcome. Direct replies preferred (in addition group postings if useful to the general group). Regrard, dk

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Python 2.1 with tcl/tk 8.4.5
by Mathieu Cousy May 12, 2005

May 12, 2005

Hi all, For different reasons I need to build a python interpreter 2.1 linked with tk 8.4.5 library (I am working on a Debian Woody system). The whole python building process succeeded but when I try to run the tkinter demo (Demo/tkinter/guido/AttrDialog.py) an exception is raised on any events (mouse pressed, key pressed...). The exception is : Exception in Tkinter callback Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/cousy/dev/debian/Python-2.1.3/install/lib/python2.1/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1284, in __call__ args = apply(self.subst, args) File "/home/cousy/dev/debian/Python-2.1.3/install/lib/python2.1/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1024, in _substitute e.num = getint(b) ValueError: invalid literal for int(): ?? Is there any kind of incompatibility between these versions ? Any hints, docs, links etc would be much appreciated. Thanks in adavance, Mathieu. -- Mathieu COUSY Prestataire QUATERNOVE @ Centre d'Etudes de la Navigation Aerienne (CENA) Division I.C.S. Batiment 1608, Route peripherique Est 91200 Athis-Mons, FRANCE tel : 01 69 57 68 35 Mail : cousy(a)ath.cena.fr

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Python 2.1 with tcl/tk 8.4.5
by Mathieu Cousy May 11, 2005

May 11, 2005

Hi all, For different reasons I need to build a python interpreter 2.1 linked with tk 8.4.5 library (I am working on a Debian Woody system). The whole python building process succeeded but when I try to run the tkinter demo (Demo/tkinter/guido/AttrDialog.py) an exception is raised on any events (mouse pressed, key pressed...). The exception is : Exception in Tkinter callback Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/cousy/dev/debian/Python-2.1.3/install/lib/python2.1/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1284, in __call__ args = apply(self.subst, args) File "/home/cousy/dev/debian/Python-2.1.3/install/lib/python2.1/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1024, in _substitute e.num = getint(b) ValueError: invalid literal for int(): ?? Is there any kind of incompatibility between these versions ? Any hints, docs, links etc would be much appreciated. Thanks in adavance, Mathieu. -- Mathieu COUSY Prestataire QUATERNOVE @ Centre d'Etudes de la Navigation Aerienne (CENA) Division I.C.S. Batiment 1608, Route peripherique Est 91200 Athis-Mons, FRANCE tel : 01 69 57 68 35 Mail : cousy(a)ath.cena.fr

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Re: [Tkinter-discuss] Tkinter-discuss Digest, Vol 15, Issue 5
by Vania Smrkovski May 10, 2005

May 10, 2005

Thanks, Harlin, As it happens, I stumbled upon that solution somewhere else, too, and it worked. The Tkinter sites are more than honest in not having the level of documentation that would avoid my repeat question. But having been involved in open source for some time, I have to say I am very thankful that no one has been unduly rude to me for asking a FAQ. I appreciate your answer, too. Now, I am working on integrating my wireless palm handheld with Python services. I am surprised that there still are not palm interpreters for PalmOS (beyond Pippy, I mean), but I can stand to learn a little C again after all these years of scripting.... Thanks again, _____________________ Vania Smrkovski www.pandorasdream.com ----- Original Message ----- I think this sort of thing is asked more in this list than anywhere else :-) Try using Tk().after(milliseconds, function/method). Sure it can eat up some memory but it works pretty well. Harlin Seritt tkinter-discuss-request(a)python.org wrote: Send Tkinter-discuss mailing list submissions to tkinter-discuss(a)python.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tkinter-discuss or, via email, send a message with subject or body \'help\' to tkinter-discuss-request(a)python.org You can reach the person managing the list at tkinter-discuss-owner(a)python.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than \"Re: Contents of Tkinter-discuss digest...\" Today\'s Topics: 1. Re: Tkinter and threading (Russell E. Owen) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 12:04:34 -0700 From: \"Russell E. Owen\" Subject: Re: [Tkinter-discuss] Tkinter and threading To: tkinter-discuss(a)python.org Message-ID: In article , Vania Smrkovski wrote: > Hello, > New to this group, and I have not found much in the way of documentation > for advanced uses of Tkinter, yet. So far, Tk3k is the most advanced > resource I have found yet. > I am trying to implement threading in my Tkinter app. I have managed to > get a button to fire an FTP download into one of my text areas, but to get > rid of the delay on the GUI while the FTP process was being handled, I > created a thread in the button\'s command handler.... You cannot safely make Tkinter from any thread other than the one that started the tkinter mainloop (i.e. your main thread unless you are doing something really weird). As far as network communication goes, you have several options... - Use the free \"twisted framework\". It integrates with Tkinter and other GUI toolkits, handles most of the standard protocols and is reported to be very good. - For ftp, do the transfer in the background and poll the state. This is especially appropriate if you have multiple transfers since one polling loop can poll all of them. For an example see RO.Comm.FTPGet and the associated widget RO.Wdg.FTPLogWdg in the RO package . - For TCP/IP use a tcl socket and use file events to handle incoming data and errors. This has the advantage of being asynchronous (and is completely cross platform unlike the a similar technique at the Tkinter level). For an example see RO.Comm.TCPConnection and the underlying RO.Comm.TkSocket. -- Russell P.S. there were rumors a few years ago that you could safely generate Tkinter events from a background thread and have the main thread handle them. However, I am pretty sure (based on my own tests) that it\'s not actually safe to do that. My suggestion is to NEVER deal with Tkinter or Tk from a background thread. ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Tkinter-discuss mailing list Tkinter-discuss(a)python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tkinter-discuss End of Tkinter-discuss Digest, Vol 15, Issue 5 ********************************************** --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Mobile Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone.

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Re: [Tkinter-discuss] Tkinter-discuss Digest, Vol 15, Issue 5
by Harlin Seritt May 10, 2005

May 10, 2005

I think this sort of thing is asked more in this list than anywhere else :-) Try using Tk().after(milliseconds, function/method). Sure it can eat up some memory but it works pretty well. Harlin Seritt tkinter-discuss-request(a)python.org wrote: Send Tkinter-discuss mailing list submissions to tkinter-discuss(a)python.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tkinter-discuss or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to tkinter-discuss-request(a)python.org You can reach the person managing the list at tkinter-discuss-owner(a)python.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Tkinter-discuss digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Tkinter and threading (Russell E. Owen) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 12:04:34 -0700 From: "Russell E. Owen" Subject: Re: [Tkinter-discuss] Tkinter and threading To: tkinter-discuss(a)python.org Message-ID: In article , Vania Smrkovski wrote: > Hello, > New to this group, and I have not found much in the way of documentation > for advanced uses of Tkinter, yet. So far, Tk3k is the most advanced > resource I have found yet. > I am trying to implement threading in my Tkinter app. I have managed to > get a button to fire an FTP download into one of my text areas, but to get > rid of the delay on the GUI while the FTP process was being handled, I > created a thread in the button\'s command handler.... You cannot safely make Tkinter from any thread other than the one that started the tkinter mainloop (i.e. your main thread unless you are doing something really weird). As far as network communication goes, you have several options... - Use the free "twisted framework". It integrates with Tkinter and other GUI toolkits, handles most of the standard protocols and is reported to be very good. - For ftp, do the transfer in the background and poll the state. This is especially appropriate if you have multiple transfers since one polling loop can poll all of them. For an example see RO.Comm.FTPGet and the associated widget RO.Wdg.FTPLogWdg in the RO package . - For TCP/IP use a tcl socket and use file events to handle incoming data and errors. This has the advantage of being asynchronous (and is completely cross platform unlike the a similar technique at the Tkinter level). For an example see RO.Comm.TCPConnection and the underlying RO.Comm.TkSocket. -- Russell P.S. there were rumors a few years ago that you could safely generate Tkinter events from a background thread and have the main thread handle them. However, I am pretty sure (based on my own tests) that it's not actually safe to do that. My suggestion is to NEVER deal with Tkinter or Tk from a background thread. ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Tkinter-discuss mailing list Tkinter-discuss(a)python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tkinter-discuss End of Tkinter-discuss Digest, Vol 15, Issue 5 ********************************************** --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Mobile Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone.

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Tkinter and threading
by Vania Smrkovski May 9, 2005

May 9, 2005

Hello, New to this group, and I have not found much in the way of documentation for advanced uses of Tkinter, yet. So far, Tk3k is the most advanced resource I have found yet. I am trying to implement threading in my Tkinter app. I have managed to get a button to fire an FTP download into one of my text areas, but to get rid of the delay on the GUI while the FTP process was being handled, I created a thread in the button\'s command handler. On my Linux box, the below handler works as I expected. If I do not have the host, username and password defined, I get a showerror() pop telling the user of the problem. However, on my PC, I get a beep, but no pop. The problem appears to be with calling a Tkinter method from within a thread. When I pop a showerror() command outside of the thread, I get exactly what I ask for. But, as you can see in the exception handler, my PC gets the PRINT statement, but no error dialog. Here is a snippet from one of the class methods: def HandleFTP(self): def AppendLine(data): self.UI.T.insert(END, data + \"\\n\") def threadcode(): try: ftp = ftplib.FTP(self.UI.Host) ftp.login(self.UI.Username,self.UI.Password) ftp.cwd(\'/www/\') filename = \'admin.php\' ftp.retrbinary(\'RETR \' +filename, AppendLine) #ftp.storbinary(\'STOR \' +filename, open(filename, \'rb\')) except AttributeError: print \"Missing Configuration\", \"To use FTP, add the following to \" + \\ \"your config.ini file\\n\\n\" + \\ \"[FTP]\\n\" + \\ \"Host=ftp.wherever.com\\n\" + \\ \"Username=[yourusername]\\n\" + \\ \"Password=[yourpassword]\" showerror(\"Missing Configuration\", \"To use FTP, add the following to \" + \\ \"your config.ini file\\n\\n\" + \\ \"[FTP]\\n\" + \\ \"Host=ftp.wherever.com\\n\" + \\ \"Username=[yourusername]\\n\" + \\ \"Password=[yourpassword]\") t = threading.Thread(target=threadcode, name=\"ftpthread\") t.setDaemon(1) t.start() Am I missing something, or is there some specific approach required to do threading? In all other ways, the theading works exactly as expected. That is, when I provide the host, username and password, I get my button and UI fully functional with no delays, and then the text field gets populated. Thanks, _____________________ Vania Smrkovski www.pandorasdream.com

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Internationalising Tkinter
by Martin Franklin May 6, 2005

May 6, 2005

Hi all, As the subject says my boss in his infinite wisdom has asked me to investigate "Internationalizing Tkinter" By this I mean I have a Python & Tkinter application that among other things produces reports (using the Canvas postscript method) What I would very much like to do is have this application display widgets in different languages (just Spanish for now but I would like to build / use a frame work where any language python / Tk supports may be used) I have googled for "Internationalizing python" and came up with this excellent article (still reading through it as I write this) but it is quite old and I wonder if it's a little out of date. http://python.fyxm.net/workshops/1997-10/proceedings/loewis.html Any hints, docs, links etc would be much appreciated. Cheers, Martin.

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Re: [Tkinter-discuss] Tkinter-discuss Digest, Vol 15, Issue 1
by Harlin Seritt May 3, 2005

May 3, 2005

Hi Ian, I had some trouble doing something like this when I was trying to write a balloon widget. I was using while, threading, etc... Try changing your act() method to this: def act(self): self.ring = self.stringv.get()+self.stringv2.get()+":"\ +self.stringv3.get()+self.stringv4.get() self.track = [None] self.c = self.clock() self.stringv.set(self.c[0]) self.stringv2.set(self.c[1]) self.stringv3.set(self.c[3]) self.stringv4.set(self.c[4]) self.c = self.clock() if self.c != self.ring: if self.c == self.track[-1]: pass else: self.stringv.set(self.c[0]) self.stringv2.set(self.c[1]) self.stringv3.set(self.c[3]) self.stringv4.set(self.c[4]) self.track.append(self.c) else: winsound.PlaySound("rooster.wav", winsound.SND_LOOP) self.master.after(1000, self.act) Tk().after(milliseconds, method/function to call) is great for this sort of thing. Good luck! Harlin Seritt tkinter-discuss-request(a)python.org wrote: Send Tkinter-discuss mailing list submissions to tkinter-discuss(a)python.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tkinter-discuss or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to tkinter-discuss-request(a)python.org You can reach the person managing the list at tkinter-discuss-owner(a)python.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Tkinter-discuss digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Problem looping (Brill IanT) 2. Re: Problem looping (Cameron Laird) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 17:41:50 +0100 (BST) From: Brill IanT Subject: [Tkinter-discuss] Problem looping To: tkinter-discuss(a)python.org Message-ID: <20050502164151.17812.qmail(a)web26606.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi all! I was wondering if anyone could help me out. I wrote a little alarm clock program in Python, and now want to incorporate it into a Tkinter frame. It's all going quite well, but this is my first experience with Tk and I've hit a bit of a wall. One of the button's commands refers to a method (called 'act') which has a while loop within it (keeps track of the time and ought to display it in the Tk frame). But the problem is the while loop is interupting the root mainloop, so the labels will not update, and freezes until the while loop is over. Does anyone have any suggestions to get round this? Here's the program: import time, winsound from Tkinter import * class App: def __init__(self,master): self.master = master frame = Frame(master,bd=6,relief=RIDGE) frame.pack() frame2 = Frame(master) frame2.pack() self.list = ["9","8","7","6","5","4","3","2","1","0"] self.stringv = StringVar() self.stringv.set("0") self.stringv2 = StringVar() self.stringv2.set("0") self.stringv3 = StringVar() self.stringv3.set("0") self.stringv4 = StringVar() self.stringv4.set("0") self.lab1 = Label(frame,font=("helvica",22),bg="red", textvariable=self.stringv).pack(side=LEFT) self.b1 = Button(frame2,text="H",width=3,command=self.change) self.b1.pack(side=LEFT) self.lab2 = Label(frame,font=("helvica",22),bg="red", textvariable=self.stringv2).pack(side=LEFT) self.b2 = Button(frame2,text="h",width=3,command=self.change2) self.b2.pack(side=LEFT) self.lab3 = Label(frame,text=":",font=("helvica",22), bg="red",).pack(side=LEFT) self.lab4 = Label(frame,font=("helvica",22),bg="red", textvariable=self.stringv3).pack(side=LEFT) self.b3 = Button(frame2,text="M",width=3,command=self.change3) self.b3.pack(side=LEFT) self.lab5 = Label(frame,font=("helvica",22),bg="red", textvariable=self.stringv4).pack(side=LEFT) self.b4 = Button(frame2,text="m",width=3,command=self.change4) self.b4.pack(side=LEFT) self.set_button = Button(master,text="Set",width=20, command=self.act).pack() def change(self): if int(self.stringv2.get()) < 3: self.list1 = self.list[7:] i = self.list1.index(self.stringv.get()) self.stringv.set(self.list1[i-1]) else: self.list1 = self.list[8:] i = self.list1.index(self.stringv.get()) self.stringv.set(self.list1[i-1]) def change2(self): self.list2 = self.list[6:] if self.stringv.get() == "2": i = self.list2.index(self.stringv2.get()) self.stringv2.set(self.list2[i-1]) else: i = self.list.index(self.stringv2.get()) self.stringv2.set(self.list[i-1]) def change3(self): self.list3 = self.list[4:] i = self.list3.index(self.stringv3.get()) self.stringv3.set(self.list3[i-1]) def change4(self): i = self.list.index(self.stringv4.get()) self.stringv4.set(self.list[i-1]) def act(self): self.ring = self.stringv.get()+self.stringv2.get()+":"\ +self.stringv3.get()+self.stringv4.get() self.track = [None] self.c = self.clock() self.stringv.set(self.c[0]) self.stringv2.set(self.c[1]) self.stringv3.set(self.c[3]) self.stringv4.set(self.c[4]) while 1: self.c = self.clock() if self.c != self.ring: if self.c == self.track[-1]: pass else: self.stringv.set(self.c[0]) self.stringv2.set(self.c[1]) self.stringv3.set(self.c[3]) self.stringv4.set(self.c[4]) self.track.append(self.c) else: winsound.PlaySound("rooster.wav", winsound.SND_LOOP) def clock(self): t1 = time.localtime()[3:5] if t1[0] in range(10): tm1 = '0'+ str(t1[0]) else: tm1 = str(t1[0]) if t1[1] in range(10): tm2 = '0'+ str(t1[1]) else: tm2 = str(t1[1]) tm3 = tm1 + ":" + tm2 return tm3 if __name__ == "__main__": root=Tk() root.title("") root.geometry("100x97+300+200") App(root) root.mainloop() Thanks in advance. 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