Also noted that if the page has been raised, then it cannot be configured to be disabled or normal, even if I called redraw. My workaround is not to raise the page at the creation time, but until after the page is configured to the wanted state (in my case, from disabled to normal), then redraw the page to update the text display, and then raise the page, something like:
Widget::configure $path.f$page {-state normal}
$notebook _redraw
$notebook raise [$notebook page 0] ;# raise the first page by default
I wonder if and hope there is a natural way which is robust and independent of whether the page has been raised or not.