Several Monks kindly suggested that I use the DynaTabFrame to overcome problems I was having with the normal tabbed frame.
I have started to do this and am very pleased with the results.
I use the grid geometry manager and I found that I needed to have ->pack() at the end of each call to add which adds a tabbed frame.
Without the pack the tabbed frames were not displayed correctly.
I am more than content to do this but I wondered if this the best thing to do.
Attached is some Perl where it is simple to change whether or not pack is used.

use Tk;
use Tk::DynaTabFrame;

use strict;
use warnings;

my ($tabno, %frames, %label, %cp_wg, $raised_label);

my $color = 'GREY';
my $raisecolor = 'WHITE';
my $side = 'nw';
my $mw = MainWindow->new();
my $frame_for_dynatab = $mw->Frame(-borderwidth => 4, -relief => 'rais
+ed')->grid(-row => 0, -column => 0);

my $dtf = $frame_for_dynatab->DynaTabFrame(
    -font => 'Arial 8', 
    -raisecmd => \&raise_cb,
    -tabcolor => $color,
    -raisecolor => $raisecolor,
    -tabside => $side,
    -tabpadx => 3,
    -tabpady => 3,
    -tiptime => 600,
    -tipcolor => 'white'
    )
    ->grid(-row => 0, -column => 0);

$raised_label = $frame_for_dynatab->Label(-text => "")->grid(-row => 1
+, -column => 0);

for($tabno = 1; $tabno <= 20; $tabno ++) {

               my $caption = "Caption $tabno";
#            print "$caption\n";

            $frames{$tabno} = $dtf->add(
                -caption => $caption, 
                -tabtip => "Tip for $tabno",
            )->pack();
#            );

            $label{$tabno} = $frames{$tabno}->Label(-text => "Text in 
+$tabno Tabbed Frame", -width => 100)->grid(-row => 1, -column => 0);

            $cp_wg{$caption} = $frames{$tabno};
       }

sub raise_cb() {

my ($current_tab, $current_tab_name, $lbr_str);

        $current_tab =  $dtf->cget(-raised);
        $current_tab_name=  $dtf->cget(-raised_name);

        $lbr_str = "current <$current_tab> name <$current_tab_name>";

        $raised_label->configure (-text => $lbr_str);
}


MainLoop;
[download]