minimizing Tk programs to the taskbar

[Cameron Laird]

In article <KF%h9.126691$pX1.4542200 at news2.tin.it>,
Alex Martelli  <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:
>Cameron Laird wrote:
>
>> In article <Vz_h9.126208$pX1.4528221 at news2.tin.it>,
>>
>> Alex Martelli  <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:
>> >Richard Tardif wrote:
>> >> Is there any way to minimize programs to the taskbar? I'm talking about
>> >> windows here. By taskbar I mean the area down in the bottom right
>> >> corner, near the clock, that shows icons for what proggies you've got
>        ...
>> ?  Alex and Richard, I think you'll want to experiment with
>>   root = Tkinter.Tk()
>>     ...
>>   Tkinter.Wm.iconify(root)
>
>Nope: this (at least on Win/98 -- I have no other Win release at hand to 
>try,
>but I don't think the difference matters here) minimizes the window in the
>normal way, NOT to the system-tray, which Richard described as "the
>area down in the bottom right" and (probably mis-)named "taskbar".
>
>> Alex' intuition that a lot of the operations people say they
>> want are platform- or window-manager-specific is certainly
>> apt.
>
>Sure, but Richard did say he meant Windows (though he probably should
>have uppercased that) -- that's pretty much an acknowledgment of
>being platform-specific.  On Win in particular, crowding the system tray
>with a zillion icons was all the rage once -- so many programs did it,
>particularly device drivers and various daemons, as to make things more
>or less unusable.  Win/XP now tries to help by hiding most of the system
>tray except icons used recently, unless one specifically 'opens' the tray.
>It's still somewhat of a mess (and becomes worse, the more programmers
>learn to use Shell_NotifyIcon:-), but that's another issue.
			.
			.
			.
I applaud Alex (a non-native English speaker, moreover!)
for his careful reading.  He's accurate in all he writes
here, and, more than that, he's well informed--his are
exactly the comments that should be made.  I apologize
for confusing matters.

Many people who ask questions of the sort Mr. Tardif asked
find Tkinter's iconify() at least partially satisfying;
that's my experience, at least.  Those who want to pursue 
Tkinter management of the system tray more will probably
find <URL: http://wiki.tcl.tk/winico > interesting.
winico is a rather popular small Tk extension to manage
Windows icons.  At the very least, its source code should
be instructive.

Do properly-coded Tk extensions benefit Tkinter users 
directly?  Is there a way to load them?  I doubt it, but
I haven't thought long about it ...
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://phaseit.net/claird/home.html