Tkinter binding and keyboard hardware settings (WinXP)

[Claudio Grondi]

apriebe47 at gmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have created a simple canvas in Tkinter to display a number of
> PhotoImages, I then bind a key (in my case, <Up>) to start a loop that
> plays through a list of PhotoImages to make it an animation of sorts.
> What I noticed is, after holding down the key for a certain time, it
> would not loop through all 6 animations, instead it would just go
> through the first 2 and reset it self. I changed the key bind to
> Button-1 and did not encounter this problem. I then went into my
> keyboard hardware settings and changed the repeat rate to the longest
> delay and the repeat delay to the longest delay. This improved it some
> what, but I don't think it is practical to do this everytime I start up
> the program. My question is, is there a way to bind a key so as to make
> it ignore the keyboard's delay and repeat rate settings? Here's the
> code just so you can get an idea:
> 
> # GIF Animation Test
> 
> from Tkinter import *
> from time import sleep
> 
> class GIF:
>     def __init__(self, root):
>         self.root = root
>         self.canvas = Canvas(root, bg="white", width=225, height=200)
>         self.canvas.pack()
>         self.cronoUpImageList =[
>          "cronoup1.gif", "cronoup2.gif", "cronoup3.gif",
>          "cronoup4.gif", "cronoup5.gif", "cronoup6.gif"]
>         self.gifImage = PhotoImage(file=self.cronoUpImageList[0])
>         self.cronoDefUp = PhotoImage(file="cronodefup.gif")
>         self.drawImage = self.canvas.create_image(112.5, 100, image=
>                                                       self.cronoDefUp)
>         self.canvas.bind("<Up>", self.keyboardPrsUp)
>         self.canvas.bind("<Down>", self.keyboardRlsUp)
> 
>     def keyboardPrsUp(self, event):

           currentTime = ...
           if( currentTime - self.timeOfLastKeyPush < self.minDelay):
             pass
           else:
             self.timeOfLastKeyPush = currentTime
             ...

>         self.canvas.delete(self.drawImage)
>         self.counter = 0
>         self.killEvent = False
>         while self.killEvent != True:
>             print self.cronoUpImageList[self.counter]
>             self.gifImage =
> PhotoImage(file=self.cronoUpImageList[self.counter])
>             self.drawImage = self.canvas.create_image(112.5, 100,
> image=
>                                                       self.gifImage)
>             self.counter = self.counter + 1
>             if self.counter > 5:
>                 self.counter = 0
>             self.canvas.update()
>             sleep(.05)
> 
> 
>     def keyboardRlsUp(self, event):
>         self.counter = 0
>         self.killEvent = True
>         self.canvas.delete(self.drawImage)
>         self.drawImage = self.canvas.create_image(112.5, 100, image=
>                                                       self.cronoDefUp)
> 
> 
> root = Tk()
> root.title("GIF Animation Test")
> app = GIF(root)
> root.mainloop()
> 

What about simple tracking of time (see above NOT tested rough draft) in 
the keyboardPrsUp and keyboardRlsUp functions, so, that events raised 
earlier than after a specified delay period will just become ignored?

Claudio Grondi