"Gary Koskenmaki" <gar...@cableone.net> wrote
I have what is a noob's confusion about this that will lead to bigger
problems for me later on if I don't clear it up.

Don't worry, this kind of confusion abounds in GUI toolkits of all
kinds not just wxPython.

In wxPython what a user normally refers to as a "window" is known as a frame. And what is known in wxPython as a window is an object such as a
TextCtrl object.  At least that is what I take from "wxPython in
Action".

Correct, and the latter usage is common parlance in most GUI frameworks. A window is any visible area of the screen, including widgets. The name
for the top level object varies from toolkit to toolkit.

Now, wxApp has a method called SetTopWindow and you normally pass your
wxframe object to it so that it knows what is to be top object.

I think this is historic since many early toolkits had some kind of
setTopWindow method (Microsoft and Borland, and at least one X windows
toolkit all did). The name in wxPython is simply a reflection of the underlying
C++ wxWidgets which, I think, simply reflects the historical legacy.

Why isn't it named something like SetTopFrame?
What am I missing?

Nothing, it's just one of the many accidents of programming legacy.
Like why does Lisp use "car" to get the first item off a list? Because
that's the machine instruction that did it on the computer they built
the first Lisp on... There are a lot of these historical accidents that
creep into programming languages. Learn to love them! :-)

HTH,


--
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/

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