I tried to study up on our... so I'm sort of fishing in the dark here, but I wonder: are those four packages in the same source file? If so, what if you were to push @ISA, ...; instead of always replacing its contents via "="?

According to the docs for "our": 

   Multiple "our" declarations in the same lexical scope are
   allowed if they are in different packages.  If they happened to
   be in the same package, Perl will emit warnings if you have
   asked for them.

       use warnings;
       package Foo;
       our $bar;       # declares $Foo::bar for rest of lexical scope
       $bar = 20;

       package Bar;
       our $bar = 30;  # declares $Bar::bar for rest of lexical scope
       print $bar;     # prints 30

       our $bar;       # emits warning

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So maybe you want: 
 package File_Rating_DB; #pckg ONE
 sub write_db(){}...

 package Entry_Ordering; #pckg TWO
 our @ISA = qw(File_Rating_DB);
 sub next_rand_or_recorded_file() {}...

 package Entry_Display_In_Wins; #pckg THREE
 our @ISA;
 push @ISA, qw(Entry_Ordering);
 sub __hk_space(){ call next_rand_or_recorded_file}...
 sub __hk_quit(){ ...calls write_db on exit }
 sub handle_key($tkcontext,$dbhandle,$key_event, $key_code) {}

 package Timed_Display_In_Wins; #pckg FOUR
 our @ISA;
 push @ISA, qw(Entry_Display_In_Wins); sub _handle_timer(){}

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Update: Then again, if the four packages are in the same file, maybe you only want "our @ISA" once (in package TWO) -- try leaving out the "our @ISA" in the later packages, and just push onto it.

(As I said, I'm just guessing, but it seems worth a try, maybe?)

BTW, regarding my earlier reply, I do know what you mean when you say the old code "wasn't in a form I wanted to enhance it in." I've had that same feeling about some of the stuff I've written, and somehow it usually seems to involve Tk scripts... Good luck!

In reply to Re: Missing base classes when called from Tk by graff
in thread Missing base classes when called from Tk by perl-diddler

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