Tkinter displaying 300 records sluggish

[Irene Barg]

Hello All,

I have a Tkinter/PMW GUI interface to a flatfile (in memory) database 
(FlatDB, written by Colin Svingen). When displaying 300 records, it takes approx 
10 seconds on a Sun Ultra 60 2x360MHz, with 1024MBytes RAM running under 
Python 2.1, and scrolling through the results is slugish. On a Toshiba Satellite 
Pro, Pentium 4, 1.70GHz CPU, 260MB RAM, running RedHat Linux (v8.0)and Pytho2.2, 
it takes approx. 5 seconds to display 300 records, but scrolling is much faster. 
The result set is a list of lists. The actual size of the db is only 97K, which 
shouldn't be a problem with either machine. Are there any coding techniques to 
improve performance with Tkinter? Has this been documented anywhere?

The portion of code that handles the looping through the results follows.  
I appreciate your comments. --irene barg

def displayColumns(self,style):
	"""Tabular view of data."""
	#print "displayColumns: action=%s style=%s" % (self.action,style)
	#print "    skipfields=",self.skipfields," skipcols=",self.skipcols
	offset = 0
	tkclass = None
	# if action is 'Delete' or 'Modify', then first column is a
	# 'Select' Checkbutton, or Button (respectively).
	if (self.action == 'Delete') or (self.action == 'Modify'):
		l = Tkinter.Label(self.sframe,text='%s' % self.action,
							borderwidth=1,
							background='lightgrey',
							foreground='black',
							relief='raised')
		l.grid(row=0,column=0,sticky='NSEW')
		self.sframe.columnconfigure(0,weight=0)
		offset=1
		if (self.action == 'Delete'): tkclass='Tkinter.Checkbutton'
		if (self.action == 'Modify'): tkclass='Tkinter.Button'

	# put our column names across the top        
	numcol = len(self.columns)
	for j in range(numcol):
		if (style == 'Compact') and (j in self.skipcols): continue
		l =      Tkinter.Label(self.sframe,text=string.capitalize(self.columns[j]),
							borderwidth=1,
							background='lightgrey',
							foreground='black',
							relief='raised')
		l.grid(row=0,column=j+offset,sticky='NEW',padx=2,pady=2)
		self.sframe.columnconfigure(j+offset,weight=0)
	self.sframe.rowconfigure(0,weight=0)
	# our data rows follow
	rn = 1
	delvars = []
	maxw = 30
	h = 1
	for i in range(self.numrecs):
		if style == 'Normal':
			h = self.lineheight(maxw,self.data[i])            
			if h <= 0:  h = 1
		for j in range(numcol):
			if (style == 'Compact') and (j in self.skipcols): continue
			if self.data is None:
				val = ""
				w = 10
			else:
				val = self.data[i][j]
				w = len(val)
				if w > maxw:  w = maxw                        
			if (style == 'Normal') and (self.urlndx != j):
				#wrap long text fields, except URL
				field = Tkinter.Text(self.sframe,
									height=h,
									width=w,
									wrap='word',
									background='white',
									foreground='black')
				field.insert('1.0',val)
			else:
				##Compact
				field = Tkinter.Entry(self.sframe,
									width=w,
									background='white',
									foreground='black')
				field.insert(0,val)
			field.configure(state='disabled')
			if (self.action == 'Search') and (self.urlndx == j):
				field.configure(foreground='blue',
								highlightbackground='lightgrey',
								relief='raised',)
				field.bind('<Double-Button-1>',self.viewPublication)
			field.grid(row=rn,column=j+offset,sticky='NEW',padx=2,pady=2)
			self.sframe.columnconfigure(j+offset,weight=0)
		
		# insert Select column if action Delete/Modify
		if ((self.action == 'Modify') or (self.action == 'Delete')):
			b = Tkinter.Radiobutton(self.sframe,
									text='%d' % i,
									command=self.selectRecord,
									variable=self.pickvar,
									value=i,
									borderwidth=1,
									background='white',
									foreground='black',
									relief='raised',)
			b.grid(row=rn,column=0,sticky='NEW',padx=2,pady=2)
			self.sframe.columnconfigure(0,weight=0)
		self.sframe.rowconfigure(rn,weight=0)
		rn = rn +1