[Edu-sig] Interactive Tkinter graphics under IDLE

[Peter Drake]

I'm planning to keep things at a very low level throughout the  
course. These students aren't ever going to be writing programs more  
than ten or twenty lines long, so all of the OO machinery is  
unnecessarily confusing. (I am, of course, not trying to start any  
kind of paradigm war here; I'm just explaining where I'm coming from.)

I don't intend to have any buttons or other widgets; just a single  
canvas on which lines, ovals, polygons, and text are drawn.

As for the window issue, it is an annoyance to have to explicitly  
bring the graphics window forward every time you reload your program.  
Is there no command I could put into the program to bring this window  
to the front?

I may play with writing a procedural front end for Zelle's library.  
Stay tuned.

Peter Drake
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Lewis & Clark College
http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/




On Feb 6, 2007, at 3:32 PM, kirby urner wrote:

>
> > 3) It is object-oriented, confusing students with the combination
> > of regularFunctions() and object.methods(). I'd just as soon avoid
> > this if possible.
>
> In my course, we go to the object model very early, on the assumption
> that OO is Python's paradigm.  But we're not doing a formal CS0, so
> aren't a puzzle piece in someone's larger grand scheme of things.
>
> The way we introduce OO is demonstrated in my "classes and subclasses"
> screencast here:
>
> http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2007/01/python-for-math-teachers.html
>
> I also much prefer VPython to Tk for doing intro level graphics  
> (not that it
> has to be either/or -- Tk is better for widgets (which I wouldn't  
> touch without
> OO already established)).
>
> As for what windows open in front of what, seems to me if the windows
> are small to begin with it's not a big deal to click on the one you  
> want to
> have focus, but I guess I'm not understanding your real problem.
>
> Kirby
>