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.

See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.