Why Tk matters
Tk probably is one of the most underlooked GUI toolkits. It is a nice small toolkit which is really, I mean REALLY simple to use.
Tk by the way, has something common with Vi. Oh no, it's not that it beeps all the time as possessed; I meant it works everywhere. I bet you can find Tk ported to any single platform having a GUI and it will work consistently on all of them.Tk is ubiquitous. Guess what? Almost certainly you have Tk already installed on your computer. Got Python? Go look into /usr/lib/python2.5/lib-tk, it's right there!How to use it? It's very easy. Look, here is a 'Hello, world' program in Python (using a Tk binding called Tkinter):from Tkinter import * Label(text='Hi there').pack()
The program apparently pops up a window with some text inside. Yes, it's that trivial. And this is the area where Tk shines: quick, small GUI tools.
Yet Tk is very powerful. People create big sophisticated systems using just this toolkit. The most prominent example is definitely AC3D, a 3D modeling program.Tk, however, has some issues. I think nobody will argue that Tk looks ugly on the Linux platform. While the Windows and Mac versions have native look, the Linux port looks shokingly disgusting. Some work is being done in this department but it's not quite completed.Somebody might ask why use Tk if there is wxPython. Well, for the same reason why there are bicycles and airplanes. They are good for different purposes. Tk is way more lightweight and much easier to learn and use than wxPython.Tk is very well documented. Here is the official Tkinter documentation with links to tutorials and such:If you're going to learn Tk, it's worth to mention that Tk is actually a part of something called Tcl/Tk. Tcl stands for Tool Command Language, a Shell-like scripting language easy to learn and fun to use. Even though all you want might be just Tkinter, some knowledge of Tcl will be rewarding.
