Python and Tkinter Programming by John Grayson

[Kevin Walzer]

On 1/14/10 3:39 PM, Peter wrote:
> On Jan 15, 6:24 am, Mark Roseman<m... at markroseman.com>  wrote:
>>   Peter<peter.milli... at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> Besides, the book is mainly about using Python with Tkinter - and
>>> Tkinter hasn't changed that much since 2000, so I believe it is just
>>> as relevant today as it was back then.
>>
>> I'd say that Tkinter has substantially changed - with the introduction
>> of the 'ttk' themed widgets.  I cover these in my tutorial athttp://www.tkdocs.com
>>
>> Mark
>
> But is the ttk themed widgets a "change" to Tkinter or an "addition/
> improvement"? i.e. does the themed widgets invalidate any of the
> Tkinter stuff in Grayson's book? That certainly isn't my impression of
> the themed widgets, I was of the impression that the themed widgets
> just added some convenient widgets (such as Scale, Spinbox etc) which
> a user could find in other GUI frameworks, for example, Pmw
> supplemented the basic Tkinter widget set and offered some (essential
> IMO) widgets that were missing in Tkinter - such as the Notebook
> widget.

It's both a change and an improvement. The themed widgets can be used in 
conjunction with the traditional widgets, but in many cases it's 
possible (and desirable) to update your entire application to use the 
themed widgets.

> Lets face it, if somebody wants to get up to speed on Python and GUI
> development then the book is still very, very relevant and necessary
> (IMO). The documentation for the themed widgets still leaves a lot to
> be desired from the perspective of somebody who wants to start using
> Python to create GUI applications. As Lord Eldritch reminded me in his
> post, the book even has a section on Pmw - which is what I use mainly
> for my GUI applications - because Tkinter was missing some vital
> widgets that are now available in the ttk themed set.
>
> Personally I will start to incorporate some of the ttk themed widgets
> into my applications - but Pmw will remain the 'basis' for my GUI's as
> the entire framework (IMO) supports a class oriented approach that
> allows easy creation of extensible and reconfigurable (at run time)
> GUI interfaces.

PMW is certainly a helpful addition to the Tkinter developer's toolbox, 
but it also has limitations. It suffers from some of the same 
limitations as Tk itself, i.e. it is rather dated in appearance, and 
even it lacks some modern UI features such as a good multicolumn 
listbox, treeview, etc. In addition to the ttk themed widgets, other, 
more configurable pure Tk-based megawidget packages exist, such as 
BWidgets and Tablelist, and there are Python wrappers for these at the 
Tkinter wiki (http://tkinter.unpythonic.net/wiki/).

>
> Ultimately Grayson does a good job of providing information and
> reference to toolkit(s) that allow a beginner to quickly get up to
> speed on producing a GUI using Python. It is purely up to the user
> afterwards as to whether they stick with Tkinter/Pmw (and now the ttk
> themed set) or venture into wxPython or Jython (as two examples of GUI
> 'systems' that provide 'better' facilities to a Python programmer).

Another book I've found very helpful for learning Tkinter is Programming 
Python by Mark Lutz--a lot of coverage there of GUI development.

--Kevin

-- 
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com