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Is it possible to get tkinter messagebox icon image files?

I'm developing a python/tkinter application, and finding the default messagebox lacked flexibility, I programmed my own using Toplevel.
I was rather successful in recreating the messabox appearance, however, I could not find a way to obtain the icons displayed in normal tkinter messagebox (i.e. : error, warning, info icons...)
I did some research didn't find much, except that those image were stored in a win32 DLL file... Also tried looking into the tkinter messagebox module code, but its only an interface transferring from python to TCL code I can't find (and probably wouldn't be able to read anyway...)
Is there anyway to get files or rough equivalents (PhotoImage objects) for these icons using either python or TCL executed though Tk().tk.call()?
Or any other (thourghly explained then) way to achieve this?
Right now the best solution I can think of is to use screencapture, and save the icons to files, but I'd rather be able to access the original ones...
Thanks in advance !

The rough equivalents are available as (tk global variables):
::tk::icons::warning
::tk::icons::error
::tk::icons::information
::tk::icons::question
Like anything that is not documented, it is subject to change in the future, but these should be stable.

Can I embed a matplotlib plot in a Tcl/Tk application?

I'm wondering how difficult it will be to use invoke matplotlib from a Tcl interpreter and plot to a Tk canvas created on the Tcl side.
I'm wondering what the best way to do this is.
I'm guessing I'll have to create a python interpreter, pass the canvas handle from the Tcl side to python and make use of the C API in both languages. Or is there a more elegant way?

Getting this integration right won't be easy. However, here's what I'm thinking about:
Connecting Python and Tcl
You can run Python inferior to Tcl apparently. According to this wiki page, there's a package called tclpython which can do the basic integration work for you, and the page linked to appears live. The code appears to be here, though it might need some work to make it build. (I've never tried.)
Connecting matplotlib and Tk
You can make matplotlib draw on a Tkinter window, and as long as you can make that Tkinter window with the right options, it will show up. The key is that the underlying system window IDs can be found out from Tk with winfo id $nameOfTheWindow. If you create a frame with the -container option set to true (which turns off some things and turns on a few others; you'll need to set the size explicitly) then that particular frame will be suitable for use with TkAgg on the python/matplotlib side. The key will be to make a toplevel on that side that has the -use option set to the ID retrieved from winfo id. You probably need to make sure that the python side is running its rendering in a separate thread to the outer Tcl/Tk to make the event handling work right (unless you're keen on doing deep event loop hacking; the situation is that you're actually going to have Tcl/Tk inside Python inside Tcl/Tk, as Tkinter works by delegating to a subordinate Tcl/Tk, and getting all this glued together right will be “a bit tricky”).
If that doesn't work, get matplotlib to render as an image (GIF or PNG; the latter is preferred if you've got Tk 8.6) as you can just show that easily via a photo image. This is definitely going to be possible to do without thread games; it's just passing around pure data. Probably slower and not interactive, but that might not matter for what you're doing, and it is easier in the simple case.
You will probably need the second approach if you're on Windows or OSX, as Tk there doesn't actually use X11. (Unless you're using one of the more perverse configuration options, of course.)

Key binding for window/app in python Gtk+ 3 without menu items, UI manager, etc

I'm trying to use GTK3 and Cairo from Python for a minimal plotting application where the on-screen display of Cairo's output is for user convenience.
The typical usage is that I run a command, a plot pops up on screen and is also written to file, and I want to be able to dismiss the window as quickly as possible, ideally just a "q" keypress but also the common Ctrl-W and Ctrl-Q in addition to the default Alt-F4 (does anyone really use that regularly?!?).
I also want as little UI clutter in the window as possible: ideally just the standard window surround, no menus, toolbars, etc.
So... how can I bind my "q", "Ctrl-Q", etc. keybindings to Gtk.main_quit without having to a) create a cluttersome drop-down menu bar and b) go though the heavyweight Gtk.UIManager focused on by the Python Gtk+ 3 documentation here: http://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.org/en/latest/menus.html . I hope this is possible, and doesn't require a lot of code (at least not as much as to set up all the menus!), but I can't find an example anywhere online: maybe I'm just searching for the wrong terms, being a GTK newbie.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any documentation on making such a minimal accelerator setup, and the code to configure accelerator keys seems to differ a great deal between GTK2 and 3... thanks for helping.

Connect a signal to your main frame Win.connect('key-press-event', self.on_key_function) and in on_key_function (self, widget, event) check the value of event.keyval. For ESC is 65307 if you like hardcoded. Also, for key combinations, event.state report shift, alt(meta), and so on: if Gdk.ModifierType.CONTROL_MASK & event.state:do_something if ctrl is pressed
You could have separate stataments for left-ctrl, right-alt; be sure not to try to capture predefined key combinations, thay may be consumed by window manager.
A IDE with a good introspection will help you a lot, just write Gdk (previously imported) and autocompletion will popup a lot of functions/clases, most of them with a self-explanatory name.

Don't use key-press-event and keyval, it won't work for users with non-Latin keyboard layouts. GTK+ does a great job internally to match keyvals to hardware keys, this functionality is exposed via accelerators (often shortened as accel in the API) and bindings.

Python-Tkinter:how to highlight item on taskbar on windows xp when window is minimized to the taskbar

i am using python/tkinter to write a IM software on XP. now i've got all the main functions done except i don't know how to highlight or change colour my IM item on taskbar on windows xp when window is minimized to the taskbar when a new message is received. i've search for this but just got c# solution. i need help on python. thanks!

I needed to do this for a tkinter python slack client I am writing and found http://wiki.tcl.tk/1049 . After a bit of guessing, I found that
Tk().deiconify()
Tk().focus_force()
(i.e. on the root window) does the trick. Windows doesn't actually change the focus and show the window since applications are not allowed to do that (Windows after XP) but it flashes the taskbar instead. It will keep flashing until clicked on but that seems to be the behaviour of Skype/Slack etc. Certainly close enough for many uses.
Obviously this is an old question but I couldn't find a concise, python only, answer and still needed one!

I'm not sure if there is a good way of doing this with Tk. Maybe somebody more knowledgeable will be able to point you in a better direction. Since Python is so dependent on OO, you may have a difficult time writing bindings to the Windows window manager.
If you don't find anything else, I did stumble on http://wiki.tcl.tk/4089, which manages Windows icons on the taskbar. Perhaps you could utilize this to simulate the taskbar flash that you want?

Take all input in Python (like UAC)

Is there any way I can create a UAC-like environment in Python? I want to basically lock the workstation without actually using the Windows lock screen. The user should not be able to do anything except, say, type a password to unlock the workstation.

You cannot do this without cooperation with operating system. Whatever you do, Ctrl-Alt-Del will allow the user to circumvent your lock.

The API call you're looking for Win32-wise is a combination of CreateDesktop and SetThreadDesktop.
In terms of the internals of Vista+ desktops, MSDN covers this, as does this blog post. This'll give you the requisite background to know what you're doing.
In terms of making it look like the UAC dialog - well, consent.exe actually takes a screenshot of the desktop and copies it to the background of the new desktop; otherwise, the desktop will be empty.
As the other answerer has pointed out - Ctrl+Alt+Delete will still work. There's no way around that - at least, not without replacing the keyboard driver, anyway.
As to how to do this in Python - it looks like pywin32 implements SetThreadDesktop etc. I'm not sure how compatible it is with Win32; if you find it doesn't work as you need, then you might need a python extension to do it. They're not nearly as hard to write as they sound.

You might be able to get the effect you desire using a GUI toolkit that draws a window that covers the entire screen, then do a global grab of the keyboard events. I'm not sure if it will catch something like ctrl-alt-del on windows, however.
For example, with Tkinter you can create a main window, then call the overrideredirect method to turn off all window decorations (the standard window titlebar and window borders, assuming your window manager has such things). You can query the size of the monitor, then set this window to that size. I'm not sure if this will let you overlay the OSX menubar, though. Finally, you can do a grab which will force all input to a specific window.
How effective this is depends on just how "locked out" you want the user to be. On a *nix/X11 system you can pretty much completely lock them out (so make sure you can remotely log in while testing, or you may have to forcibly reboot if your code has a bug). On windows or OSX the effectiveness might be a little less.

I would try with pygame, because it can lock mouse to itself and thus keep all input to itself, but i wouldn't call this secure without much testing, ctr-alt-del probably escape it, can't try on windows right now.
(not very different of Bryan Oakley's answer, except with pygame)