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.