Why am I not able to call python Tkinter in MATLAB?

I receive the following error when I run "py.tkinter.Tk()" though I installed the tcl files from activestate.

Error using __init__ (line 2270)

Python Error: TclError: Can't find a usable init.tcl in the following

directories:

  C:/Users/sji/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/lib/tcl8.6

  C:/MATLAB/R2021a/bin/lib/tcl8.6 C:/MATLAB/R2021a/lib/tcl8.6

  C:/MATLAB/R2021a/bin/library C:/MATLAB/R2021a/library

  C:/MATLAB/R2021a/tcl8.6.9/library C:/MATLAB/tcl8.6.9/library

This probably means that Tcl wasn't installed properly.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

Looking at the Python source code Modules\_tkinter.c, TCL uses hard coded location of tcl_library_path to find its initialization files which doesn't work when Python is loaded by MATLAB.  

Here is an workaround:

>> setenv('TCL_LIBRARY', 'C:\Users\sji\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python38\tcl\tcl8.6')

>> setenv('TK_LIBRARY', 'C:\Users\sji\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python38\tcl\tk8.6')

>> py.tkinter.Tk

Run these commands every time you run MATLAB. Alternatively, place the commands in a MATLAB startup script.