tkinter problem

[Paul Simon]

"Peter Otten" <__peter__ at web.de> wrote in message 
news:h3481q$d95$00$1 at news.t-online.com...
> Paul Simon wrote:
>
>> "Chris Rebert" <clp2 at rebertia.com> wrote in message
>> news:mailman.2863.1247095339.8015.python-list at python.org...
>> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Paul Simon<psimon at sonic.net> wrote:
>>> I have the "tkinter" problem and need some assistance to straighten it
>>> out.
>>> >From the web page "http://wiki.python.org/moin/TkInter" I tested as in
>>> >"step
>>> 1" and cannot import "_tkinter." I do not have that file on my computer,
>>> but
>>> do have tkinter.py in /usr/local/lib/python2.6/lib-tk. as well as the
>>> directories /usr/lib/tk8.5 and /usr/lib/tcl8.5.
>>> This python stuff is great, but the documentation frequently
>>> feels like it is just a bit out of my grasp. I realize that all of this
>>> is free but I understand the instructions on the web page to repair only
>>> to the
>>> point of confusion. I'm not an expert. How do I modify my python
>>> configuration? Is there a file that needs to be edited? Which setup.py
>>> file
>>> do I use? Make? or python setup.py build and python setup.py install?
>>> Thanks. I appreciate your help.
>>
>> - How did you install Python?
>> - What Linux distro are you using?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>> http://blog.rebertia.com
>> I"m using Mandriva 2008.1.  I have to tell you honestly that I'm not sure
>> exactly how I installed Python.  Originally I had installed 2.5 from RPM
>> but 2.6 was not available for my distro (2008.1) in RPM.  I downloaded
>> something from python.org and installed.  Not sure if it was tarball or
>> zip file.
>
> Zip or tar doesn't matter, you are installing "from source".
>
> Python has to find the necessary include files for tcl/tk. These are in
> separate packages that you have to install before you invoke Python's
> configure script.
>
> I don't know what they are called on your system -- look for tk-dev.rpm,
> tcl-dev.rpm or similar.
>
> You may run into the same problem with other modules like readline.
>
> Peter
>

Thank you Peter.  I understand what you are saying but don't know how to do 
it.  Although I installed from source, I followed a "cookbook" recipe. 
Could you tell me what files to execute, where they might be, and file 
arguments?  I'm just ignorant, not stupid. ;-).

Paul