title: An Introduction to Tkinter
subtitle: A User's Perspective
author: Jeffrey B. Armstrong
company: Approximatrix, LLC
footer: PyOhio
subfooter: 28 July 2012

h1. Introduction

* Tkinter (or tkinter)
** Interface to Tcl/Tk
** The only GUI framework in the Python standard library
** Simple to use
* The speaker
** Casual Tkinter user
** Some experience with other GUI toolkits

h1. Opinions

* Three types of people here
** Never used it
** Use it and Like it
** Hate it

h1. Why Care?

* Tkinter is part of the Python standard library
* Lightweight
* _Good enough_
** In fact, it can be great!

h1. The Past

* Limited widget set
* Unweildy _import_
* Considered ugly

h1. The Present

* Python 3.x
** Changed to Pythonic namespaces, like _tkinter_
** Introduced...

h1. Themed Tk

* `ttk` module
* Makes old Tkinter look pretty
** Kinda platform-specific...

h1. Getting Started

* Tk operates in "loop" that is transparent to the developer
* Widgets are assigned parents, which contain other widgets, etc.
* Layout managers handle widget placement
* Widgets can have events "bound" to them and respond accordingly

h1. Layout Managers

* Tkinter provides three geometry managers
** absolute (avoid this)
** pack
** grid

h1. pack Layout

* Extremely simple
* Specify a side
* Parent sizes itself to minimally fit everything
* Not particularly flexible for complex layouts

h1. grid Layout
    
* Closer to other toolkits
* Frames are laid out in a grid
** Resizing can be handled via _expand_ arguments

h1. Widgets

* tkinter historically provides common, simple widgets
* Considered a shortcoming 
** Missing more advanced widgets

h1. Widgets

!{border:0px; float:right; height:14em}widgets.png!

<table style="width: 40%;">
<tr><td>Button</td><td>Menu</td></tr>
<tr><td>Frame</td><td>Scale</td></tr>
<tr><td>Label</td><td>Scrollbar</td></tr>
<tr><td>Label with Image</td><td>Spinbox</td></tr>
<tr><td>Listbox</td><td>Text</td></tr></table>

h1. ttk Widgets

* "Overrides" drawing of tkinter widgets 
** Drawing now handled by theme engine
* Introduces new, modern widgets
* Change the "style"
** _ttk.Style().theme_names()_
** _ttk.Style().theme_use(style)_

h1. ttk Notebook

* Provides modern paged notebook of frames, accesible via tabs
* Sensible functionality

h1. ttk Treeview

* Implements tree, list, columned list, etc.

h1. ttk et cetera 

!{border:0px; float:right; height:10em}ttk_widgets.png!

* Combobox
* CheckButton
* RadioButton
* Progressbar
* Separator
* Sizegrip 

h1. Canvas

* Allows for simple primitive drawing within a Tk widget
* Opens up the door for custom widget behavior

h1. Events

* Tkinter events are relatively simple
** For buttons: _Button(text='Button Name', command=button_callback)_
* For more complex components, _bind_ method can be used

h1. Standard Dialogs

* File dialog
** _tkinter.filedialog_ or _tkFileDialog_
* Color chooser
** _tkinter.colorchooser_ or _tkColorChooser_
* Message box
** _tkinter.messagebox_ or _tkMessageBox_

h1. 2.7 and 3.x

* Python 2.7 and 3.x both contain Themed Tk
** Cross-version applications
* Python 2.x has different Tkinter namespace
** Python 3.x made tkinter slightly more Pythonic
** Need some ImportError exception magic for cross-version code

h1. Documentation

* Python library documentation on tkinter is arguably sparse
** ttk, however, is well-documented

* http://www.tkdocs.com/
** Reference for Tk in Tcl, Ruby, OCaml, and *Python*

h1. Summary

* Tkinter can be pretty sweet!
** Ships with (almost) all Python ports
** Now with modern widgets
* "Ugly" is gone with ttk
* Easy to build a quick GUI