thanks for all the help guys. ive been trying to learn tkinter all day
with little luck so im too tired to continue. ill do everything you
guys told me tomorrow and hopefully if all goes well, i won't be
replying to this email, i'll be making a new one with brand new
problems:)

thanks again

Thanks for the plug, Mr. O'Donnell. I'm the author of that work.
A task on my agenda is to update it for the themed widgets, and
also somehow document the differences in Python 3.x. However,
it may be a few more months before I can dig down to it.

Comments, suggestions, and corrections always welcome.

Best regards,
John Shipman (john at nmt.edu), Applications Specialist
New Mexico Tech Computer Center, Speare 146, Socorro, NM 87801
(575) 835-5735, http://www.nmt.edu/~john
``Let's go outside and commiserate with nature.'' --Dave Farber

Matthew:

Sorry for your problems. Tkinter isn't usually so hard for people to
get started with.

Your original message showed you were trying to open a .jpg image. Do
you have the option of converting it to the GIF format? If so, you
don't need PIL at all since .GIF is directly supported by Tkinter.
For example, to display a GIF image you can do this:

class ExampleApp(tk.Tk):
def __init__(self):
tk.Tk.__init__(self)
self.image = tk.PhotoImage(file=image_file)
label = tk.Label(self, image=self.image)
label.pack()


app = ExampleApp()
app.mainloop()

The above code works for me just fine with Python 3.2. All you need to
do is define 'image_file' to point to a .gif that you want to display.

Unfortunately Tkinter only directly supports .gif and the older
ppm/pgm formats. For any other format you'll need PIL, or some other
way to convert the image to a supported format.

Yeah, I know it's crazy that Tkinter only supports .GIF. For most
people who use Tkinter there are workarounds. Unfortunately, as a
newbie forced to use Python3, the workaround is not so evident.

Hi Matthew,

On Fri, 5 Oct 2012 19:10:35 +0100
maybe what confused you were some of the more "advanced" suggestions
about using the Python Imaging Library (PIL) or installing a second
Python version or discussing the handling of namespaces.

In fact, as far as I see, there is not too much difference in the
Tkinter usage between Python2.7 and Python3, so for the most part the
old Python2-based Tkinter tutorials should still serve you well. The most
evident difference is that since Python3 the tkinter module spells in
lower case.
This line seems in fact to be taken from some tutorial describing the
usage of PIL. In plain Tkinter the simplest program displaying an image
might look like (Python3 version):


from tkinter import *
root = Tk()
img = PhotoImage(file='imagepath.gif')
l = Label(root, image=img)
l.pack()
root.mainloop()

The only difference to the "Python2-version" is the lower-case "Tkinter"
in the first line.
You see that in Tkinter you usually do not have to use the Image class at
all (although it exists) but create the image directly with the PhotoImage
class.
One (more or less serious) restriction of Tkinter's standard PhotoImage
class is however that you can only use GIF images, other formats like
JPEG or PNG are not supported yet. So unfortunately you will either have
to use an external tool to convert your jpegs into gif first or install a
third-party extension like PIL or TkImg* (the latter is easier to use if
you only need support for more file formats, because no commands are
changed or added, but just support for a lot of image file formats is
added silently in the background; I am not sure however if there is a
precompiled binary for windows systems is easily available) if you really
need these formats.

Did this help any?

Best regards

Michael

* http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkimg/


.-.. .. ...- . .-.. --- -. --. .- -. -.. .--. .-. --- ... .--. . .-.

[War] is instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We're human
beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands! But we
can stop it. We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going
to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to
kill today!
-- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.0

sorry for the direct email. yes the tutorial uses Python 2, while i
only have Python 3