Python 2.3b1 and _tkinter.Tcl_Obj

[Martin v. Löwis]

"Stephen D Evans" <sde at recombinant.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Is this Python or Tk/Tcl? Is it a bug or a feature?
> 
> There are some inconsistencies in the types returned by some Tkinter widgets
> when using cget() or configure() e.g.
>     widget.cget('background')
> Menu widgets return a Tcl_Obj (typename='border'), Buttons return a string.

The inconsistency is in Tk. Tk widgets can chose whether they use the
Tcl object API or the Tcl string API; apparently, some widgets chose
one API, and other widgets the other.

If this is a problem for you, you have the following options:

- set Tkinter.wantobjects to False before creating the first
  tkapp object. This will give you the Python 2.2 behaviour.
- convert Tcl_Obj objects to strings using str()
- convert Tcl_Obj objects to Unicode using unicode()
- convert Tcl_Obj objects using 
  ASCII-if-possible-otherwise-Unicode-if-possible-otherwise-bytes
  algorithm of Python 2.2 using Tcl_Obj.string

If you feel you need to take one of these approaches, please let us
know, so we can see whether backwards compatibility needs to be
improved.

Regards,
Martin