Book Image

Python GUI programming with Tkinter

By : Alan D. Moore
Book Image

Python GUI programming with Tkinter

By: Alan D. Moore

Overview of this book

Tkinter is a lightweight, portable, and easy-to-use graphical toolkit available in the Python Standard Library, widely used to build Python GUIs due to its simplicity and availability. This book teaches you to design and build graphical user interfaces that are functional, appealing, and user-friendly using the powerful combination of Python and Tkinter. After being introduced to Tkinter, you will be guided step-by-step through the application development process. Over the course of the book, your application will evolve from a simple data-entry form to a complex data management and visualization tool while maintaining a clean and robust design. In addition to building the GUI, you'll learn how to connect to external databases and network resources, test your code to avoid errors, and maximize performance using asynchronous programming. You'll make the most of Tkinter's cross-platform availability by learning how to maintain compatibility, mimic platform-native look and feel, and build executables for deployment across popular computing platforms. By the end of this book, you will have the skills and confidence to design and build powerful high-end GUI applications to solve real-world problems.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Writing cross-platform Tkinter


As you've seen so far, Tkinter mostly works identically across platforms, and even has the capability to do the right thing on each platform with minimal effort. However, there are some minor issues to be aware of as you support a Tkinter application across multiple operating systems. In this section, we'll explore the more significant differences.

Tkinter version differences across platforms

Even if you install the latest version of Python from python.org, the actual version of Tcl/Tk installed on your system may vary widely. This can cause problems if you rely on features in the most recent Tk.

The following chart shows the versions installed by default on different systems:

OS

Tk version

Windows

8.6.6

macOS

8.5.9

Debian Linux 9

8.6.6

Ubuntu Linux 18.04

8.6.8

Windows and most Linux distributions are shipping a relatively recent version of 8.6, but macOS defaults to use its system-installed Tk version, which is 8.5.9. This can be a problem if you want to use any of the...