Book Image

Tkinter GUI Programming by Example

Book Image

Tkinter GUI Programming by Example

Overview of this book

Tkinter is a modular, cross-platform application development toolkit for Python. When developing GUI-rich applications, the most important choices are which programming language(s) and which GUI framework to use. Python and Tkinter prove to be a great combination. This book will get you familiar with Tkinter by having you create fun and interactive projects. These projects have varying degrees of complexity. We'll start with a simple project, where you'll learn the fundamentals of GUI programming and the basics of working with a Tkinter application. After getting the basics right, we'll move on to creating a project of slightly increased complexity, such as a highly customizable Python editor. In the next project, we'll crank up the complexity level to create an instant messaging app. Toward the end, we'll discuss various ways of packaging our applications so that they can be shared and installed on other machines without the user having to learn how to install and run Python programs.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Moving from the command line to a graphical interface


It is very common to see people asking for advice on how to move a command-line-only application that they have already written to a graphical interface, for reasons discussed at the end of the previous chapter, such as ease of use and familiarity. 

How easy this is to do is largely dependent on the choice of data structure used within the application. If the application's main logic is too intertwined with data collection and storage, then porting can become a nightmare. If you find yourself with a command-line application that you wish to convert, take the time to consider how separable these two pieces are.

If you are not using classes, could you split certain pieces out into small, reusable classes which could then be shared into a new file? Since classes are almost a necessity for building graphical applications, it's a good idea to ensure that your current application takes advantage of them before attempting to make it graphical...