Tk from IDLE: How to 'Hello World'?
Kirby Urner
urner at alumni.princeton.edu
Thu Sep 28 20:18:01 EDT 2000
Tk in Windows IDLE does not work the way tutorials suggest.
For example, consider Fredrik Lundh's 'Hello World' app at
http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/hello-tkinter.htm
Writing it interactively in IDLE, one would go:
>>> from Tkinter import *
>>> def test():
root = Tk()
w = Label(root, text="Hello, world!")
w.pack()
root.mainloop()
>>> test()
Which gets you the Tk window saying Hello World, as expected.
But then if you hit the close box, do you get back to a working
IDLE prompt? I don't. I'm left in limbo, with a prompt I can't
go back to.
I haven't tested this in LINUX IDLE yet, nor in 1.5.2 -- so
maybe this is a new phenomenon with the latest beta? Or is
it some problem with my setup? Could another Windows user
provide a reality check here?
Anyway, Lundh's book and many other resources do not appear
to be written with IDLE in mind. For example it states:
To run the program, run the script as usual:
$ python hello1.py
But that's not 'usual' for an IDLE user. There's no $ prompt,
and we're already in Python, and so wouldn't invoke it.
As someone interested in using Python in schools, I think
a GUI like IDLE is a potentially better learning environment
than a command line in DOS or Xterm. I would like to see more
bias in favor of using IDLE when doing work with Tk (IDLE
being itself a Tk app, after all, and cross-platform).
Kirby
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