On 10/26/2016 7:18 AM, BartC wrote:
Can tkinter do it without creating a distracting pop-up window at the same time?
Yes. I already showed how on this thread. Of course, for some text appications, one would be better off with a Text widget than with the system-specific console.
Bart, you appear to have been fortunate enough to be spoiled by learning programming on microcomputers, where the terminal and computer are combined into one unit, so that the computer, and potentially the programmer, have access to user input actions. However, Python was not developed on, and in not limited to use on, such machines. Today, ethernet-connected *nix servers have no keyboard, mouse, or even a directly connected terminal.
When Python was developed, standard C did not have keyboard and mouse functions. (I don't know about the most recent standards.) Keyboard functions on microcomputer C ports were non-standard OS-specific extensions. On Unix, X windows was and is optional.
Over 20 years ago, tk was written in tcl and C to give tcl programmers access to X Windows graphics terminals, including user input actions. It has since been ported to MS Windows and Apple OSX and adopted by other languages, including Python, to give the same access.
-- Terry Jan Reedy -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
