Everything we've done up until now has been in a single window. In this chapter, we'll cover how to use multiple windows, changing various attributes of windows, and use some of the standard dialog box windows that are available in Tk.
Creating and Destroying Windows
You've already seen that all Tk programs start out with a root toplevel window, and then widgets are created as children of that root window. Creating new toplevel windows works almost exactly the same as creating new widgets.
Toplevel windows are created using the tk::toplevel command:
tk::toplevel .t
Toplevel windows are created using the TkToplevel class:
t = TkToplevel.new(parent)
Toplevel windows are created using the new_toplevel method, a.k.a. Tkx::toplevel:
my $win = $parent->new_toplevel;
Toplevel windows are created using the Toplevel function:
t = Toplevel(parent)
Unlike regular widgets, you don't have to "grid" a toplevel for it to appear onscreen. Once you've created a new toplevel, you can then create other widgets which are children of that toplevel, and grid them inside the toplevel. In other words, the new toplevel behaves exactly like the automatically created root window.
To destroy a window, you can use the destroy command:
destroy .win1 ?.win2 ...?
Note that the destroy command lives in the global namespace; there is not atk::destroy command.
To destroy a window, you can use the destroy method on a widget:
window.destroy
To destroy a window, you can use the g_destroy method on a widget:
$window->g_destroy
To destroy a window, you can use the destroy method on a widget:
window.destroy()
Note that you can use destroy on any widget, not just a toplevel window. Also, when you destroy a window, all windows (widgets) that are children of that window are also destroyed. So if you happen to destroy the root window (that all other widgets are descended from), that will normally end your application.
Changing Window Behavior and Styles
There are lots of things about how windows behave and how they look that can be changed.
Window Title
To examine or change the title of the window:
set oldtitle [wm title .window] wm title .window "New title"
The "wm" here stands for "window manager" which is an X11 term used for a program that manages all the windows onscreen, including their title bars, frames, and so on. What we're effectively doing is asking the window manager to change the title of this particular window for us. The same terminology has been carried over to Tk running on Mac OS X and Windows.
Note that the wm command lives in the global namespace; there is not a tk::wm command.
oldtitle = window['title'] window['title'] = "New title"
my $oldtitle = $window->g_wm_title;
$window->g_wm_title("New title");
oldtitle = window.title()
window.title('New title')
Size and Location
In Tk, a window's position and size on the screen is known as its geometry. A full geometry specification looks like this:
widthxheight±x±y
Width and height (normally in pixels) are pretty self-explanatory. The "x" (horizontal position) is specified with a leading plus or minus, so "+25" means the left edge of the window should be 25 pixels from the left edge of the screen, while"-50" means the right edge of the window should be 50 pixels from the right edge of the screen. Similarly, a "y" (vertical) position of "+10" means the top edge of the window should be ten pixels below the top of the screen, while "-100" means the bottom edge of the window should be 100 pixels above the bottom of the screen.
Remember that the geometry's position are the actual coordinates on the screen, and don't make allowances for systems like Mac OS X which have a menubar along the top, or a dock area along the bottom. So specifying a position of "+0+0" would actually place the top part of the window under the system menu bar. It's a good idea to leave a healthy margin (at least 30 pixels) from an edge of the screen.
Here is an example of changing the size and position, placing the window towards the top righthand corner of the screen:
wm geometry .window 300x200-5+40
window['geometry'] = '300x200-5+40'
$window->g_wm_geometry("300x200-5+40");
window.geometry('300x200-5+40')
Stacking Order
Stacking order refers to the order that windows are "placed" on the screen, from bottom to top. When the positions of two windows overlap each other, the one closer to the top of the stacking order will obscure or overlap the one lower in the stacking order.
You can obtain the current stacking order, a list from lowest to heighest, via:
wm stackorder .window
window.stackorder
$window->wm_stackorder
root.tk.eval('wm stackorder '+str(window))
This method doesn't appear to be exposed cleanly through Tkinter's API.
You can also just check if one window is above or below another:
if {[wm stackorder .window isabove .other]} {...}
if {[wm stackorder .window isbelow .other]} {...}
if (window.stackorder_isabove otherwin) ... if (window.stackorder_isbelow otherwin) ...
if ($window->g_wm_stackorder("isabove", $otherwin)) ...
if ($window->g_wm_stackorder("isbelow", $otherwin)) ...
if (root.tk.eval('wm stackorder '+str(window)+' isabove '+str(otherwindow))=='1') ...
if (root.tk.eval('wm stackorder '+str(window)+' isbelow '+str(otherwindow))=='1') ...
You can also raise or lower windows, either to the very top (bottom) of the stacking order, or just above (below) a designated window:
raise .window raise .window .other lower .window lower .window .other
window.raise window.raise_window otherwin window.lower window.lower_window otherwin
$window->g_raise; $window->g_raise($otherwin); $window->g_lower; $window->g_lower($otherwin);
window.lift() window.lift(otherwin) window.lower() window.lower(otherwin)
Tkinter uses the name 'lift', since 'raise' is a reserved keyword.
Wondering why you needed to pass a window to get the current stacking order? It turns out that stacking order, raise and lower, etc. work not only for toplevel windows, but with any "sibling" widgets (those having the same parent). So if you have several widgets gridded together but overlapping, you can raise and lower them relative to each other. For example:
grid [ttk::label .little -text "Little"] -column 0 -row 0 grid [ttk::label .bigger -text "Much Bigger Label"] -column 0 -row 0 after 2000 raise .little
require 'tk'
require 'tkextlib/tile'
root = TkRoot.new
little = Tk::Tile::Label.new(root) {text 'Little'}.grid( :column => 0, :row => 0)
bigger = Tk::Tile::Label.new(root) {text 'Much Bigger Label'}.grid( :column => 0, :row => 0)
Tk.after 2000, proc{little.raise}
Tk.mainloop
use Tkx;
$mw = Tkx::widget->new(".");
$little = $mw->new_ttk__label(-text => "Little");
$little->g_grid(-column => 0, -row => 0);
$bigger = $mw->new_ttk__label(-text => "Much Bigger Label");
$bigger->g_grid(-column => 0, -row => 0);
Tkx::after(2000, sub {$little->g_raise();});
Tkx::MainLoop();
from tkinter import * from tkinter import ttk root = Tk() little = ttk.Label(root, text="Little") bigger = ttk.Label(root, text='Much bigger label') little.grid(column=0,row=0) bigger.grid(column=0,row=0) root.after(2000, lambda: little.lift()) root.mainloop()
The "after" command schedules a script to be executed at a certain number of milliseconds in the future, but allows normal processing of the event loop to continue in the meantime.
Resizing Behavior
Normally, toplevel windows, both the root window and others that you create, can be resized by the user. However, sometimes in your user interface, you may want to prevent the user from resizing the window. You can prevent it from being resized, in fact independently specifying whether the window's width (first parameter) can be changed, as well as its height (second parameter). So to disable all resizing:
wm resizable .window 0 0
window['resizable'] = false, false
$window->g_wm_resizable(0,0);
window.resizable(FALSE,FALSE)
Remember that if you've added a ttk::sizegrip widget to the window, that you should remove it if you're making the window non-resizable.
If resizing is enabled, you can specify a minimum and/or maximum size that you'd like the window's size to be constrained to (again, parameters are width and height):
wm minsize .window 200 100 wm maxsize .window 500 500
window['minsize'] = 200, 100 window['maxsize'] = 500, 500
$window->g_wm_minsize(200,100); $window->g_wm_maxsize(500,500);
window.minsize(200,100) window.maxsize(500,500)
Iconifying and Withdrawing
On most systems, you can temporarily remove the window from the screen by iconifying it. In Tk, whether or not a window is iconified is referred to as the window's state. The possible states for a window include "normal" and"iconic" (for an iconified window), as well as several others: "withdrawn", "icon" or "zoomed".
You can query or set the current window state, and there are also the methods "iconify" and "deiconify" which are shortcuts for setting the "iconic" or "normal" states respectively.
set thestate [wm state .window] wm state .window normal wm iconify .window wm deiconify .window
thestate = window['state'] window['state'] = 'normal' window.iconify window.deiconify
my $thestate = $window->g_wm_state;
$window->g_wm_state("normal");
$window->g_wm_iconify;
$window->g_wm_deiconify;
thestate = window.state()
window.state('normal')
window.iconify()
window.deiconify()
Standard Dialogs
Dialog boxes are a type of window used in applications to get some information from the user, inform them that some event has occurred, confirm an action and more. The appearance and usage of dialog boxes is usually quite specifically detailed in a platform's style guide. Tk comes with a number of dialog boxes built-in for common tasks, and which help you conform to platform specific style guidelines.
Selecting Files and Directories
Tk provides several dialogs to let the user select files or directories. On Windows and Mac, these invoke the underlying operating system dialogs directly. The "open" variant on the dialog is used when you want the user to select an existing file (like in a "File | Open..." menu command), while the "save" variant is used to choose a file to save into (normally used by the "File | Save As..." menu command).
set filename [tk_getOpenFile] set filename [tk_getSaveFile] set dirname [tk_chooseDirectory]
filename = Tk::getOpenFile filename = Tk::getSaveFile dirname = Tk::chooseDirectory
$filename = Tkx::tk___getOpenFile(); $filename = Tkx::tk___getSaveFile(); $dirname = Tkx::tk___chooseDirectory();
from tkinter import filedialog filename = filedialog.askopenfilename() filename = filedialog.asksaveasfilename() dirname = filedialog.askdirectory()
All of these commands produce modal dialogs, which means that the commands (and hence your program) will not continue running until the user submits the dialog. The commands return the full pathname of the file or directory the user has chosen, or return an empty string if the user cancels out of the dialog.
Open File Dialogs
Save File Dialogs
Choose Directory Dialogs
There are a variety of different options that can be passed to these dialogs, allowing you to set the allowable file types, default filename, and more. These are detailed in the getOpenFile/getSaveFile and chooseDirectory reference manual pages.
Selecting Colors
There is also a modal dialog to let the user select a color. It will return a color value, e.g. "#ff62b8". The dialog takes an optional "initialcolor" option to specify an existing color that the user is presumably replacing.
tk_chooseColor -initialcolor #ff0000
Tk::chooseColor :initialcolor => '#ff0000'
Tkx::tk___chooseColor(-initialcolor => "#ff0000");
from tkinter import colorchooser colorchooser.askcolor(initialcolor='#ff0000')
Choose Color Dialogs
Alert and Confirmation Dialogs
Many applications use various simple modal alerts or dialogs to notify the user of an event, ask them to confirm an action, or make another similar choice which is done by clicking on a button. Tk provides a versatile "message box" that encapsulates all these different types of dialogs.
tk_messageBox -message "Have a good day"
Tk::messageBox :message => 'Have a good day'
Tkx::tk___messageBox(-message => "Have a good day");
from tkinter import messagebox messagebox.showinfo(message='Have a good day')
Simple Message Boxes
tk_messageBox -type "yesno"
-message "Are you sure you want to install SuperVirus?"
-icon question -title "Install"
Tk::messageBox :type => 'yesno',
:message => 'Are you sure you want to install SuperVirus?',
:icon => 'question', :title => 'Install'
Tkx::tk___messageBox(-type => "yesno",
-message => "Are you sure you want to install SuperVirus?",
-icon => "question", -title => "Install");
messagebox.askyesno(
message='Are you sure you want to install SuperVirus?'
icon='question' title='Install')
Example Message Boxes
Like the previous dialogs that we've seen, these are modal, and will return the result of the user's action to the caller. The exact return value will depend on the "type" option passed to the command, as shown here:
| Type option | Possible return values |
|---|---|
| ok (default) | "ok" |
| okcancel | "ok" or "cancel" |
| yesno | "yes" or "no" |
| yesnocancel | "yes", "no" or "cancel" |
| retrycancel | "retry" or "cancel" |
| abortretryignore | "abort", "retry" or "ignore" |
Rather than using a 'type' option, Tkinter uses a different method name for each type of dialog. The available methods are: askokcancel, askquestion, askretrycancel, askyesno, askyesnocancel, showerror, showinfo, showwarning.
The full list of possible options is shown here:
| type | As described above. |
| message | The main message displayed inside the alert. |
| detail | If needed, a secondary message, often displayed in a smaller font under the main message. |
| title | Title for the dialog window. Not used on Mac OS X. |
| icon | Icon to show: one of "info" (default), "error", "question" or "warning". |
| default | Specify which button (e.g. "ok" or "cancel" for a "okcancel" type dialog) should be the default. |
| parent | Specify a window of your application this dialog is being posted for; this may cause the dialog to appear on top, or on Mac OS X appear as a sheet for the window. |
These new messagebox dialogs are a replacement from the older "tk_dialog" command, which does not comply with current platform user interface conventions.
