Tkinter widgets: Write options *and* option tags dynamically from dictionary?

[Laura Creighton]

> Hello Laura and Eric,
> 
> thanks very much for your answer, it has helped me a lot :)

Good to hear it.

> 
> Laura, I don't think,
> 
> widget=widgetType(master, **mydict)
> 
> is necessary. I have tried
> 
> widget=widgetType(master, mydict)
> 
> with mydict={'text':'hello', 'relief':'sunken'}. It worked without the
> two stars.
> Aren't the two stars just necessary for function calls with variable
> length key parameters?
> 
> 
> ByeBye
> 
> Johannes
> 

Fredrik Lundh's Introduction to Tkinter has a warning about this:

http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/x386-backwards-compatibility.htm

        Quoting Fredrik Lundh here:

	For example, if you create a custom widget which needs to pass 
        configuration options along to its parent class, you may come up
        with something like:

              def __init__(self, master, **kw):
                  Canvas.__init__(self, master, kw) # kw is a dictionary

        This works just fine with the current version of Tkinter, but it may 
        not work with future versions. A more general approach is to use
        the apply function:

              def __init__(self, master, **kw):
                   apply(Canvas.__init__, (self, master), kw)
--------

  The ** syntax is just a convenient shorthand for the apply.  It won't
  work before Python 2.0 and you will have to use the apply form.
  
  apply is documented here http://www.python.org/doc/lib/built-in-funcs.html

Laura Creighton