Tkinter and OS X 10.3?

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <bs7pt0$a98$1 at panix1.panix.com>, aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) 
wrote:

>Anyone used Tkinter on 10.3 yet?

With X11 or with Aqua?

There are some nasty issues with Aqua:
- Python 2.3 (the aqua version that comes with Panther) has a bug that 
prevents some standard Tkinter file dialogs from working. IDLE and a big 
Tkinter app I am writing both make some use these broken dialogs.
- (Catch 22) You cannot easily upgrade MacPython on Panther. Simply 
installing a later version (in /Library/Frameworks) causes nasty 
problems when you try to install packages (an issue that has gotten a 
lot of discussion on the Mac mailing list will apparently be resolved in 
Python 2.4). You could delete /System/Library/Frameworks/Python, but 
this is claimed to be a Very Dangerous Thing To Do by some folks in the 
know. I still haven't gotten an explanation of why this is so bad and I 
confess I'm still tempted to just do it and to hell with it, but I'm 
going to wait in hopes of hearing more first. Python with Tkinter is one 
of my main uses for this Mac, so the problem is a big one for me.
- Also, Aqua Tk still has a lot of cosmetic bugs. Menus and checkbuttons 
show truncated or wrapped text for most choices of fonts. Some buttons 
don't get displayed at first (but are present and can be pressed). Stuff 
like that. There are a lot of bug reports on source forge, but there 
have been several minor releases of tcl/tk with no progress in that area 
(I don't mean to sound whiney; I realize full well it's folks like you 
or I that have to volunteer to fix bugs for open source; I do actually 
put in some work on Tkinter but haven't dared brave the guts of tk).

I imagine X11 Tkinter works fine, though I confess I've only just 
finished building it and haven't actually run my app yet. Still, I can't 
imagine why it wouldn't unless Apple did something dreadful to X11.

-- Russell