[Tkinter-discuss] What do you feel is missing from Tkinter?

python at bdurham.com python at bdurham.com
Sat Dec 18 15:26:43 CET 2010


This post was inspired by Craf's recent post on "Tkinter in everyday
life".

I'm a recent and enthusiastic convert to Tkinter after having rejected
this toolkit for many years.

After digging into Tkinter and through the very generous help on this
mailing list and elsewhere (stackoverflow.com), I've found that most
things that I thought Tkinter couldn't do are actually very doable.
Perhaps if we share our Tkinter concerns and doubts, we can all
brainstorm ways to fill in missing pieces.

Here's my short list of Tkinter weaknesses that I've struggled with:

1. Drag and drop. In fairness, there's a Tkdnd library and a bunch of
sample code on the internet. I haven't studied the examples I've
collected enough to figure out a simple, reusable way to do this. (Most
of my use cases are simply finding a way for users to re-arrange a row
of widgets packed or grided into a container)

2. Ability to dynamically stretch and image in real-time. What I would
like to do is create widgets with a gradient background where the
background image stretches as the widget itself is resized.

3. Creating scrolling containers (I've been spoiled with Tkinter's
automatic layouts and don't look forward to manually placing widgets).

4. A way to show an auto-complete popup when one types in a Text widget.
There's an example of how to do this in the IDLE source code, I just
haven't looked for it yet.

As you can see, most of these limitations are limitations of my own
learning curve and not limitations of Tkinter itself.

Malcolm


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