The simplest solution is to make your window be a subclass of Toplevel. Then, each time you need a new window, create a new instance of the class.
You can then leave the root window blank and hide it so that you only see your custom windows. It's important to make sure that you destroy the root window after the user has deleted the last application window, or else you'll end up with an invisible window that will be hard to kill.
Here is a bit of a contrived example:
import tkinter as tk
class AppWindow(tk.Toplevel):
def __init__(self, root):
tk.Toplevel.__init__(self, root)
self.root = root
menubar = tk.Menu(self)
windowMenu = tk.Menu(menubar)
windowMenu.add_command(label="New Window", command=self.new_window)
windowMenu.add_command(label="Quit", command=root.destroy)
menubar.add_cascade(label="Window", menu=windowMenu)
self.configure(menu=menubar)
self.text = tk.Text(self)
self.vsb = tk.Scrollbar(self, orient="vertical", command=self.text.yview)
self.text.configure(yscrollcommand=self.vsb.set)
self.vsb.pack(side="right", fill="y")
self.text.pack(side="left", fill="both", expand=True)
# call a function to destroy the root window when the last
# instance of AppWindow is destroyed
self.wm_protocol("WM_DELETE_WINDOW", self.exit_on_last_window)
def new_window(self):
AppWindow(self.root)
def exit_on_last_window(self):
"""Destroy the root window when no other windows exist"""
self.destroy()
if not any([window.winfo_exists() for window in self.root.winfo_children()]):
self.root.destroy()
def quit(self):
self.root.destroy()
# create the root, then hide it. The app will create its
# own windows as Toplevels
root = tk.Tk()
root.withdraw()
# create the first window, then start the event loop
AppWindow(root)
tk.mainloop()