.. _tkinter:

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Graphical User Interfaces with Tk

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.. index::

   single: GUI

   single: Graphical User Interface

   single: Tkinter

   single: Tk

Tk/Tcl has long been an integral part of Python.  It provides a robust and

platform independent windowing toolkit, that is available to Python programmers

using the :mod:`Tkinter` module, and its extension, the :mod:`Tix` module.

The :mod:`Tkinter` module is a thin object-oriented layer on top of Tcl/Tk. To

use :mod:`Tkinter`, you don't need to write Tcl code, but you will need to

consult the Tk documentation, and occasionally the Tcl documentation.

:mod:`Tkinter` is a set of wrappers that implement the Tk widgets as Python

classes.  In addition, the internal module :mod:`_tkinter` provides a threadsafe

mechanism which allows Python and Tcl to interact.

:mod:`Tkinter`'s chief virtues are that it is fast, and that it usually comes

bundled with Python. Although its standard documentation is weak, good 

material is available, which includes: references, tutorials, a book and 

others. :mod:`Tkinter` is also famous for having an outdated look and feel, 

which has been vastly improved in Tk 8.5. Nevertheless, there are many other 

GUI libraries that you could be interested in. For more information about 

alternatives, see the :ref:`other-gui-packages` section.

.. toctree::

   tkinter.rst

   tix.rst

   scrolledtext.rst

   turtle.rst

   idle.rst

   othergui.rst

.. Other sections I have in mind are

   Tkinter internals

   Freezing Tkinter applications