Tix
--- Extension widgets for TkThe Tix
(Tk Interface Extension) module provides an additional rich set
of widgets. Although the standard Tk library has many useful widgets, they are
far from complete. The Tix
library provides most of the commonly needed
widgets that are missing from standard Tk: HList
, ComboBox
,
Control
(a.k.a. SpinBox) and an assortment of scrollable widgets.
Tix
also includes many more widgets that are generally useful in a wide
range of applications: NoteBook
, FileEntry
,
PanedWindow
, etc; there are more than 40 of them.
With all these new widgets, you can introduce new interaction techniques into applications, creating more useful and more intuitive user interfaces. You can design your application by choosing the most appropriate widgets to match the special needs of your application and users.
Note
Tix
has been renamed to tkinter.tix
in Python 3. The
2to3 tool will automatically adapt imports when converting your
sources to Python 3.
See also
- Tix Homepage
- The home page for
Tix
. This includes links to additional documentation and downloads. - Tix Man Pages
- On-line version of the man pages and reference material.
- Tix Programming Guide
- On-line version of the programmer's reference material.
- Tix Development Applications
- Tix applications for development of Tix and Tkinter programs. Tide applications work under Tk or Tkinter, and include TixInspect, an inspector to remotely modify and debug Tix/Tk/Tkinter applications.
class Tix.Tix(screenName[, baseName[, className]])
Toplevel widget of Tix which represents mostly the main window of an application. It has an associated Tcl interpreter.
Classes in the Tix
module subclasses the classes in the Tkinter
module. The former imports the latter, so to use Tix
with Tkinter, all
you need to do is to import one module. In general, you can just import
Tix
, and replace the toplevel call to Tkinter.Tk
with
Tix.Tk
:
import Tix
from Tkconstants import *
root = Tix.Tk()
To use Tix
, you must have the Tix
widgets installed, usually
alongside your installation of the Tk widgets. To test your installation, try
the following:
import Tix
root = Tix.Tk()
root.tk.eval('package require Tix')
If this fails, you have a Tk installation problem which must be resolved before
proceeding. Use the environment variable TIX_LIBRARY
to point to the
installed Tix
library directory, and make sure you have the dynamic
object library (tix8183.dll
or libtix8183.so
) in the same
directory that contains your Tk dynamic object library (tk8183.dll
or
libtk8183.so
). The directory with the dynamic object library should also
have a file called pkgIndex.tcl
(case sensitive), which contains the
line:
package ifneeded Tix 8.1 [list load "[file join $dir tix8183.dll]" Tix]
Tix
introduces over 40 widget classes to the Tkinter
repertoire. There is a
demo of all the Tix
widgets in the Demo/tix
directory of the
standard distribution.
class Tix.Balloon
A Balloon that pops up over a widget to provide help. When the user moves the cursor inside a widget to which a Balloon widget has been bound, a small pop-up window with a descriptive message will be shown on the screen.
class Tix.ButtonBox
The ButtonBox
widget creates a box of buttons, such as is commonly used for Ok Cancel
.
class Tix.ComboBox
The ComboBox widget is similar to the combo box control in MS Windows. The user can select a choice by either typing in the entry subwidget or selecting from the listbox subwidget.
class Tix.Control
The Control
widget is also known as the SpinBox
widget. The user can adjust the
value by pressing the two arrow buttons or by entering the value directly into
the entry. The new value will be checked against the user-defined upper and
lower limits.
class Tix.LabelEntry
The LabelEntry widget packages an entry widget and a label into one mega widget. It can be used to simplify the creation of "entry-form" type of interface.
class Tix.LabelFrame
The LabelFrame
widget packages a frame widget and a label into one mega widget. To create
widgets inside a LabelFrame widget, one creates the new widgets relative to the
frame
subwidget and manage them inside the frame
subwidget.
class Tix.Meter
The Meter widget can be used to show the progress of a background job which may take a long time to execute.
class Tix.OptionMenu
The OptionMenu creates a menu button of options.
class Tix.PopupMenu
The PopupMenu
widget can be used as a replacement of the tk_popup
command. The advantage
of the Tix
PopupMenu
widget is it requires less application code
to manipulate.
class Tix.Select
The Select widget is a container of button subwidgets. It can be used to provide radio-box or check-box style of selection options for the user.
class Tix.StdButtonBox
The StdButtonBox widget is a group of standard buttons for Motif-like dialog boxes.
class Tix.DirList
The DirList widget displays a list view of a directory, its previous directories and its sub-directories. The user can choose one of the directories displayed in the list or change to another directory.
class Tix.DirTree
The DirTree widget displays a tree view of a directory, its previous directories and its sub-directories. The user can choose one of the directories displayed in the list or change to another directory.
class Tix.DirSelectDialog
The DirSelectDialog widget presents the directories in the file system in a dialog window. The user can use this dialog window to navigate through the file system to select the desired directory.
class Tix.DirSelectBox
The DirSelectBox
is similar to the standard Motif(TM)
directory-selection box. It is generally used for the user to choose a
directory. DirSelectBox stores the directories mostly recently selected into
a ComboBox widget so that they can be quickly selected again.
class Tix.ExFileSelectBox
The ExFileSelectBox
widget is usually embedded in a tixExFileSelectDialog widget. It provides a
convenient method for the user to select files. The style of the
ExFileSelectBox
widget is very similar to the standard file dialog on
MS Windows 3.1.
class Tix.FileSelectBox
The FileSelectBox
is similar to the standard Motif(TM) file-selection box. It is generally used
for the user to choose a file. FileSelectBox stores the files mostly recently
selected into a ComboBox
widget so that they can be quickly selected
again.
class Tix.FileEntry
The FileEntry widget can be used to input a filename. The user can type in the filename manually. Alternatively, the user can press the button widget that sits next to the entry, which will bring up a file selection dialog.
class Tix.HList
The HList widget can be used to display any data that have a hierarchical structure, for example, file system directory trees. The list entries are indented and connected by branch lines according to their places in the hierarchy.
class Tix.CheckList
The CheckList widget displays a list of items to be selected by the user. CheckList acts similarly to the Tk checkbutton or radiobutton widgets, except it is capable of handling many more items than checkbuttons or radiobuttons.
class Tix.Tree
The Tree widget can be used to display hierarchical data in a tree form. The user can adjust the view of the tree by opening or closing parts of the tree.
class Tix.TList
The TList widget
can be used to display data in a tabular format. The list entries of a
TList
widget are similar to the entries in the Tk listbox widget. The
main differences are (1) the TList
widget can display the list entries
in a two dimensional format and (2) you can use graphical images as well as
multiple colors and fonts for the list entries.
class Tix.PanedWindow
The PanedWindow widget allows the user to interactively manipulate the sizes of several panes. The panes can be arranged either vertically or horizontally. The user changes the sizes of the panes by dragging the resize handle between two panes.
class Tix.ListNoteBook
The ListNoteBook
widget is very similar to the TixNoteBook
widget: it can be used to
display many windows in a limited space using a notebook metaphor. The notebook
is divided into a stack of pages (windows). At one time only one of these pages
can be shown. The user can navigate through these pages by choosing the name of
the desired page in the hlist
subwidget.
class Tix.NoteBook
The NoteBook widget can be used to display many windows in a limited space using a notebook metaphor. The notebook is divided into a stack of pages. At one time only one of these pages can be shown. The user can navigate through these pages by choosing the visual "tabs" at the top of the NoteBook widget.
The Tix
module adds:
- pixmap
capabilities to all
Tix
andTkinter
widgets to create color images from XPM files. - Compound image
types can be used to create images that consists of multiple horizontal lines;
each line is composed of a series of items (texts, bitmaps, images or spaces)
arranged from left to right. For example, a compound image can be used to
display a bitmap and a text string simultaneously in a Tk
Button
widget.
class Tix.InputOnly
The InputOnly
widgets are to accept inputs from the user, which can be done with the bind
command (Unix only).
In addition, Tix
augments Tkinter
by providing:
class Tix.Form
The Form geometry manager based on attachment rules for all Tk widgets.
class Tix.tixCommand
The tix commands provide
access to miscellaneous elements of Tix
's internal state and the
Tix
application context. Most of the information manipulated by these
methods pertains to the application as a whole, or to a screen or display,
rather than to a particular window.
To view the current settings, the common usage is:
import Tix
root = Tix.Tk()
print root.tix_configure()
tixCommand.tix_configure(cnf=None **kw)
Query or modify the configuration options of the Tix application context. If no option is specified, returns a dictionary all of the available options. If option is specified with no value, then the method returns a list describing the one named option (this list will be identical to the corresponding sublist of the value returned if no option is specified). If one or more option-value pairs are specified, then the method modifies the given option(s) to have the given value(s); in this case the method returns an empty string. Option may be any of the configuration options.
tixCommand.tix_cget(option)
Returns the current value of the configuration option given by option. Option may be any of the configuration options.
tixCommand.tix_getbitmap(name)
Locates a bitmap file of the name name.xpm
or name
in one of the bitmap
directories (see the tix_addbitmapdir()
method). By using
tix_getbitmap()
, you can avoid hard coding the pathnames of the bitmap
files in your application. When successful, it returns the complete pathname of
the bitmap file, prefixed with the character @
. The returned value can be
used to configure the bitmap
option of the Tk and Tix widgets.
tixCommand.tix_addbitmapdir(directory)
Tix maintains a list of directories under which the tix_getimage()
and
tix_getbitmap()
methods will search for image files. The standard bitmap
directory is $TIX_LIBRARY/bitmaps
. The tix_addbitmapdir()
method
adds directory into this list. By using this method, the image files of an
applications can also be located using the tix_getimage()
or
tix_getbitmap()
method.
tixCommand.tix_filedialog([dlgclass])
Returns the file selection dialog that may be shared among different calls from
this application. This method will create a file selection dialog widget when
it is called the first time. This dialog will be returned by all subsequent
calls to tix_filedialog()
. An optional dlgclass parameter can be passed
as a string to specified what type of file selection dialog widget is desired.
Possible options are tix
, FileSelectDialog
or tixExFileSelectDialog
.
tixCommand.tix_getimage(self, name)
Locates an image file of the name name.xpm
, name.xbm
or
name.ppm
in one of the bitmap directories (see the
tix_addbitmapdir()
method above). If more than one file with the same name
(but different extensions) exist, then the image type is chosen according to the
depth of the X display: xbm images are chosen on monochrome displays and color
images are chosen on color displays. By using tix_getimage()
, you can
avoid hard coding the pathnames of the image files in your application. When
successful, this method returns the name of the newly created image, which can
be used to configure the image
option of the Tk and Tix widgets.
tixCommand.tix_option_get(name)
Gets the options maintained by the Tix scheme mechanism.
tixCommand.tix_resetoptions(newScheme, newFontSet[, newScmPrio])
Resets the scheme and fontset of the Tix application to newScheme and newFontSet, respectively. This affects only those widgets created after this call. Therefore, it is best to call the resetoptions method before the creation of any widgets in a Tix application.
The optional parameter newScmPrio can be given to reset the priority level of the Tk options set by the Tix schemes.
Because of the way Tk handles the X option database, after Tix has been has
imported and inited, it is not possible to reset the color schemes and font sets
using the tix_config()
method. Instead, the tix_resetoptions()
method must be used.