@Miguel
About tk_busy_configure():
I strongly suggest that my version of tk_busy_configure() is better, since it behaves exactly like the usual configure() methods in Tkinter (which includes e.g. Canvas.itemconfigure() or Text.tag_configure()), i.e. you can not only change the values of the configuration options, but also query available options and their default values. I think *this* follows the usual Tkinter conventions.
As you pointed out in your last post, I could not use _configure() directly for this, but had to "duplicate" the code with a slight modification, because of the order of arguments for tk_busy_configure().
The reason that this construct is not used for pack_configure() is simply that widget.pack_configure() does not return anything if called without arguments (in fact it appears to be the very same as widget.pack()).

About busy_status():
the construct I use here is to work around the broken _getboolean() which does not always return True or False, but often returns None instead of False (if wantobjects==True). Therefore I used (unlike most Tkinter methods) tkapp.getboolean() directly, however quite a while ago I noticed that this was broken, too, and sometimes returned 0 or 1 instead of True or False. However I admit that I did not test right now if this is still the case, in fact I just copy'n'pasted it from code I already use and that works perfectly well (BTW, I suggested the same method to fix these issue with _getboolean() here some time ago, and of course I agree that it would be preferrable to fix _getboolean() and possibly tkapp.getboolean() in the first place).

@Serhiy
Thanks for the link, I did not find the source tree on the new python web site (I admit I did not look too hard :) .
I now added a patch against the default branch'es __init__.py . Doc strings are (still :) included. I also changed the function names according to Miguel's suggestion.
I'll see if I find the time to add a proper test class one of these days (you guys make it really hard for outsiders to help out ;)