16.1.1 Tkinter Modules

Most of the time, the Tkinter module is all you really need, but a number of additional modules are available as well. The Tk interface is located in a binary module named _tkinter. This module contains the low-level interface to Tk, and should never be used directly by application programmers. It is usually a shared library (or DLL), but might in some cases be statically linked with the Python interpreter.

In addition to the Tk interface module, Tkinter includes a number of Python modules. The two most important modules are the Tkinter module itself, and a module called Tkconstants. The former automatically imports the latter, so to use Tkinter, all you need to do is to import one module:

import Tkinter

Or, more often:

from Tkinter import *

class Tk(screenName=None, baseName=None, className='Tk')
The Tk class is instantiated without arguments. This creates a toplevel widget of Tk which usually is the main window of an appliation. Each instance has its own associated Tcl interpreter.

Other modules that provide Tk support include:

ScrolledText
Text widget with a vertical scroll bar built in.

tkColorChooser
Dialog to let the user choose a color.

tkCommonDialog
Base class for the dialogs defined in the other modules listed here.

tkFileDialog
Common dialogs to allow the user to specify a file to open or save.

tkFont
Utilities to help work with fonts.

tkMessageBox
Access to standard Tk dialog boxes.

tkSimpleDialog
Basic dialogs and convenience functions.

Tkdnd
Drag-and-drop support for Tkinter. This is experimental and should become deprecated when it is replaced with the Tk DND.

turtle
Turtle graphics in a Tk window.

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