[Tkinter-discuss] How to do things before Tk window creation --or--, how to perform initial window initialization correctly ?

[Jeff Epler]

You can create your Tk application and immediately withdraw the main
window.  Something like this:

    t = Tkinter.Tk()
    t.wm_withdraw()
    # other setup here
    t.wm_deiconify()
    t.raise()
    t.mainloop()
On the other hand, you should be able to run code between creation of
Tk() and t.mainloop during which time no window is shown (I tested this
on Unix only):
    import Tkinter, time

    t = Tkinter.Tk()
    print "created"
    time.sleep(1)
    print "done with setup"
    t.mainloop()
... the window doesn't appear until after "done with setup" is printed.

You can make calls like 't.bind_class()' instead of calling sleep.
If you make calls like 't.update_idletasks()', though, the window will
appear.

Jeff