Chapter 1. Meet Tkinter
Welcome to the exciting world of GUI programming with Tkinter. This chapter aims at getting you acquainted with Tkinter, the built-in graphical user interface (GUI) library for all standard Python distributions.
Tkinter (pronounced tea-kay-inter) is the Python interface to Tk, the GUI toolkit for Tcl/Tk.
Tcl (short for Tool Command Language and pronounced as tickle) is a popular scripting language in the domains of embedded applications, testing, prototyping, and GUI development. On the other hand, Tk is an open source, multi-platform widget toolkit that is used by many different languages to build GUI programs.
The Tkinter interface is implemented as a Python module—Tkinter.py in Python 2.x versions and tkinter/__init__.py in Python 3.x versions. If you look at the source code, Tkinter is just a wrapper around a C extension that uses the Tcl/Tk libraries.
Tkinter is suitable for application to a wide variety of areas, ranging from small desktop applications to use in scientific modeling and research endeavors across various disciplines.
When a person learning Python needs to graduate to GUI programming, Tkinter seems to be the easiest and fastest way to get the work done.
Tkinter is a great tool for the programming of GUI applications in Python.
The features that make Tkinter a great choice for GUI programming include the following:
It is simple to learn (simpler than any other GUI package for Python)
Relatively little code can produce powerful GUI applications
Layered design ensures that it is easy to grasp
It is portable across all operating systems
It is easily accessible, as it comes pre-installed with the standard Python distribution
None of the other Python GUI toolkits have all of these features at the same time.