Python tkinter: Make any output appear in a text box on GUI not in the shell

Question

I am making a GUI using python and tkinter and just wondering if there is anyway to make any output text appear in a window on the GUI not on the interpreter/shell?

Answer 1

If, as suggested in Bryan Oakley's comment, you want to “print 'foo' in your GUI, but have it magically appear in the text widget”, see answers in previous question Python : Converting CLI to GUI. This answer addresses the simpler issue of how to produce output in a text box. To produce a scrolling text window, create and place or pack a text widget (let's call it mtb), then use commands like mtb.insert(Tkinter.END, ms) to add string ms into text box mtb, and like mtb.see(Tkinter.END) to make the box scroll. (See “The Tkinter Text Widget” documentation for more details.) For example:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import Tkinter as tk

def cbc(id, tex):
    return lambda : callback(id, tex)

def callback(id, tex):
    s = 'At {} f is {}\n'.format(id, id**id/0.987)
    tex.insert(tk.END, s)
    tex.see(tk.END)             # Scroll if necessary

top = tk.Tk()
tex = tk.Text(master=top)
tex.pack(side=tk.RIGHT)
bop = tk.Frame()
bop.pack(side=tk.LEFT)
for k in range(1,10):
    tv = 'Say {}'.format(k)
    b = tk.Button(bop, text=tv, command=cbc(k, tex))
    b.pack()

tk.Button(bop, text='Exit', command=top.destroy).pack()
top.mainloop()

Note, if you expect the text window to stay open for long periods and/or accumulate gigabytes of text, perhaps keep track of how much data is in the text box, and use the delete method at intervals to limit it.