Tkinter docs?

[Rob Cliffe]

I have recently started converting a large project to tkinter, starting 
with zero knowledge of tkinter.  (You are free to think: BAD IDEA. 😁)
I am well aware that adopting a new tool always involves a learning 
curve, and that one is prone to think that things are more difficult 
than they are/should be, and to belly-ache about it, and that in a year 
from now I'll probably wonder what I'm fussing about.
Nonetheless ISTM that there is a particular problem with tkinter:

     There doesn't seem to be any decent documentation for it anywhere.

  I seem to have spent al least 95% (feels more like 99%) of my time in 
research, only the rest available for coding.  Everything I've learned 
has come from scouring the Internet for Stack Overflow pages, videos, 
and other articles.  And while I'm VERY grateful for these resources, 
most of them cover very basic use, and if I want information on some 
more obscure technical point, I can only go on looking and looking and 
hope I eventually stumble upon what I'm looking for, or some acceptable 
substitute.
FWIW: The tkinter error messages are sometimes helpful, sometimes not, 
occasionally very helpful (as when I pass an invalid option parameter to 
a function and it tells me what the valid ones are).  I feel there is 
plenty of room for improvement.

One example for those familiar with tkinter (I assure you there are 
others) of how I struggle without adequate documentation:
     I had learned very early on that tkinter provides two versions of 
some classes: the original, or "tk" versions, and a later generation, 
the "ttk" versions (and I have to say that that was a turn-off, as it 
seemed that the learning curve has just got steeper).  It was surely not 
appropriate for me to delve deeply into this issue at that stage, as 
there were so many other things I didn't know (like, practically 
everything).  I decide to go with the "tk" versions pro tem, and to 
investigate the "ttk" versions later if it seemed like a good idea.  One 
annoyance is that some webpages are relevant to one version, some to the 
other, almost always without being explicit about which.  (Can't blame 
the "tk" ones, as they were probably written before "ttk" was invented.)
     I was writing a subclass of the Checkbutton class (tkinter's name 
for what I call a checkbox).  I needed to be able to (1) set (2) clear 
(3) interrogate the checked state.  This is easy to do if you associate 
a "variable" with each Checkbutton instance, as seems to be usual 
tkinter practice.  ("variable" is not a variable in the usual sense, but 
an object provided by tkinter that is linked to a GUI object (such as a 
Checkbutton), so that when the GUI object changes, the value of the 
"variable" changes, and vice versa.) However, I decided that I wanted to 
dispense with the variable, if possible.  (My motivation?  Simpler 
code.  Shorter code.  Avoiding using up resources by creating 
unnecessary objects.  You are free to think that I was misguided.  You 
are free to think that I should have been happy with something that 
worked.)  I didn't care whether I used a tk.Checkbutton or a 
ttk.Checkbutton.
     From various Internet articles I discovered (slowly, after wading 
through many articles that DID use a "variable"):
         A way of GETting the state of a tk.CheckButton (but not a 
ttk.CheckButton)
         A way of SETting the state of a ttk.CheckButton (but not a 
tk.CheckButton)
         Or the other way round.  Or something else.  I can no longer 
remember, and I didn't keep a record of all my trials and tribulations, 
and I can no longer trace which articles I read when.
     EVENTUALLY I discovered:
         For a ttk.CheckButton (only), where cb is the checkbox
             cb.state() returns a tuple of strings which contains, or 
doesn't, "selected", according to the checked state
             cb.state(["selected"]) sets the checked state
             cb.state(["!selected"]) clears the checked state
"Aha!" I thought.  "Problem solved".  Gleefully I wrote my code and 
tested it.
Er, well, not quite.  When the Checkbutton object was instantiated, it 
showed neither a checked nor an unchecked box, but a solid black box.  
This was the third or so-called "alternate" state provided by tkinter.  
(Gee, thanks.  Oh sorry, it's probably not your fault; as I understand 
it, tkinter, you're really just a wrapper.)
Further research revealed that I could get past this by writing
     cb.state(["!alternate", "!selected"])
when the object was instantiated.
Phew!  Finally got my code working.
But the story is not quite over.  To get the checked state I was using
     "selected" in cb.state()
While this works, later (in fact while composing this e-mail) I stumbled 
across
     cb.instate(["selected"])
which does the same thing but is, I guess, the preferred method.  I have 
amended my code accordingly.
(I don't know why the square brackets are necessary, but
     cb.instate("selected")
doesn't work.)
Sigh.  I suppose I have the satisfaction of having overcome a 
challenge.  But how much nicer if all this information were in one place 
somewhere.

Now, my remarks are as a tk newbie; they may be naive and ignorant, 
perhaps even laughable.  But IMO it is often worth listening to input 
from newbies to consider how things might be improved.

Comments, anyone?
Better yet (holds breath ...) can anyone point me towards some decent 
tkinter documentation?

Best wishes
Rob Cliffe