I have a device that understands multiple serial protocols. During development I created simple Tkinter UIs to play with the protocols. Each protocol got a new UI. Since the protocols have lots of commands, I implemented the entire UI within a scrollable canvas to permit it to be scrolled when used on smaller displays. The separate UIs worked fine, and I'm now trying to combine the separate UIs into a tabbed UI.
The common elements of each UI are the serial port selector, which I separated out and put into a separate top frame. I then implemented a notebook, and put each protocol UI into a frame for each tab.
But I'm unable to properly control sizing: I want the root window width to be fixed at the maximum width of any of the protocol frames or serial selector frame, with horizontal resizing disabled. I want the serial selector to always be present, and not be affected when the window is vertically resized (only the notebook is resized/scrolled).
Below is what I have so far. All the pieces are present, but the notebook doesn't fill the complete window width, and the notebook doesn't resize when the window is resized (resizing just adds blank space).
def main():
## Main window
root = Tkinter.Tk()
root.title("Multi-Protocol UI")
## Grid sizing behavior in window
root.grid_rowconfigure(0, weight=0)
root.grid_rowconfigure(1, weight=1)
root.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
root.grid_columnconfigure(1, weight=0)
## Window content
upper = ttk.Frame(root) # Serial port selector
upper.grid(row=0)
upper.grid_rowconfigure(0, weight=0)
upper.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
upper.grid_columnconfigure(1, weight=0)
lower = ttk.Frame(root) # For protocols
lower.grid(row=1)
lower.grid(row=1, sticky='nswe')
lower.grid_rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
lower.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
lower.grid_columnconfigure(1, weight=0)
# Setup serial control frame
serial = SerialFrame(master=upper) # Serial port selector widget + Open button
## Protocol GUIs are large: Use a form within a scrollable canvas.
cnv = Tkinter.Canvas(lower)
cnv.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky='nswe')
cnv.grid_rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
cnv.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
cnv.grid_columnconfigure(1, weight=0)
# Scrollbar for canvas
vScroll = Tkinter.Scrollbar(
lower, orient=Tkinter.VERTICAL, command=cnv.yview)
vScroll.grid(row=0, column=1, sticky='ns')
cnv.configure(yscrollcommand=vScroll.set)
# Frame in canvas
window = Tkinter.Frame(cnv)
window.grid()
# Put the frame in the canvas's scrollable zone
cnv.create_window(0, 0, window=window, anchor='nw')
# Setup the notebook (tabs) within the scrollable window
notebook = ttk.Notebook(window)
frame1 = ttk.Frame(notebook)
frame2 = ttk.Frame(notebook)
notebook.add(frame1, text="ProtoA")
notebook.add(frame2, text="ProtoB")
notebook.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky='nswe')
# Create tab frames
protoA = ProtoAFrame(master=frame1)
protoA.grid()
protoA.update_idletasks()
protoB = ProtoBFrame(master=frame2)
protoB.grid()
protoB.update_idletasks()
## Update display to get correct dimensions
root.update_idletasks()
window.update_idletasks()
## Configure size of canvas's scrollable zone
cnv.configure(scrollregion=(0, 0, window.winfo_width(), window.winfo_height()))
# Not resizable in width:
root.resizable(width=0, height=1)
## Go!
root.mainloop()
How do I lock down the top serial frame, expand the notebook to full width, and force window resizing to only affect the notebook frame? I'm a Tkinter newbie, so please be gentle if I've missed something "obvious".
TIA!
You have widgets nested inside widgets. Even if you have the notebook set to expand properly in it's container, you need to also make sure that every container upwards also expands properly. You haven't done that. For example, ask yourself whether the canvas has been set up to properly grow inside of lower.
Since you are starting out, here is what I recommend. Instead of trying to get everything right at once, choose a "divide and conquer" approach. First, create frames for the major areas of your GUI. Do nothing but those frames, and get their resize behavior to be exactly what you want. It helps at this stage to give each its own color so you can clearly see where the widgets are. You can always change the color later. Also, if you only have a couple widgets, or all your widgets are oriented horizontally or vertically, pack is often easier to use than grid.
For example:
upper.pack(side="top", fill="x", expand=False)
lower.pack(side="bottom", fill="both", expand=True)
Once you have these major pieces resizing appropriately it's time to solve the problem for just one of those areas. Pick an area, and do the same: add in its children widgets, or subdivide into frames if you have areas within an area. Once you have this working, lather, rinse, repeat.
Related
I have been attempting to create a application that contains two Text() widgets, both of which can dynamically resize when the window size is changed. Before I have always used the root.pack() manager, with fill='both' and expand=True.
While this works for LabelFrames and most other widgets, it does not work when a Text widget is resized smaller then its original dimensions. Is there a way to have dynamically resizing Text widgets?
Ex.
import tkinter as tk
window = tk.Tk()
editor = tk.Text(bg='red')
editor.pack(side='top',fill='both',expand=True)
output = tk.Text(bg='green')
output.pack(side='top',fill='both',expand=True)
window.mainloop()
Tkinter will try to honor the requested size of a text widget. Since you didn't specify a size, the text widget will request a size of 80x24. When you resize the window smaller, pack tries to make room for everything at its requested size, and it does so in stacking order.
As the window shrinks, there's room for all of the first text widget but not enough for both. Because there's not enough room, it has to subtract space from the remaining widgets. Thus, it starts chopping off the last text widget.
To combat this, you can set the requested size of the text widgets to a small value that will fit in almost any window size, and then force them to grow by setting the size of the window as a whole. This way, pack will first allocate enough space for each small window, and then expand them equally when there's extra space.
For example:
import tkinter as tk
window = tk.Tk()
window.geometry("400x400")
editor = tk.Text(bg='red', width=1, height=1)
output = tk.Text(bg='green', width=1, height=1)
editor.pack(side='top',fill='both',expand=True)
output.pack(side='top',fill='both',expand=True)
window.mainloop()
The other solution is to use grid which lets you specify that rows and columns should be of uniform size.
import tkinter as tk
window = tk.Tk()
editor = tk.Text(bg='red')
output = tk.Text(bg='green')
editor.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky="nsew")
output.grid(row=1, column=0, sticky="nsew")
window.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
window.grid_rowconfigure((0,1), weight=1, uniform=1)
window.mainloop()
I would really appreciate some help with figuring out grid geometry manager.
Here is what I want to build.
I was thinking of using grid but I cannot find any good tutorials that would clearly
explain how to work with it.
There are lots of tutorials but mostly all are either very simple or really outdated.
I am not sure how to build what is shown in the picture using only grid because all
elements are nested inside each other and each element is supposed to hold more elements inside it.
It's not so hard to arrange outermost widgets using grid. I just place Toolbar into 0th row,
then outermost PanedWidow (green) into 1st row, and then Status Bar into 2nd row.
After that I need to arrange things inside green PanedWindow.
I place another PanedWindow (pink) into the right pane of the green PanedWindow and then
stick a Notebook into it's top pane.
Now, I need to add more widgets to these inner panes. For instance. I am going to add
some buttons to the bottom pane of the pink PanedWindow. And that's where I run into problems.
If I try to use pack() to arrange things inside these innermost panes, Python screams at me for
using more than one geometry manager.
But when I think about how to accomplish this with grid, I just can't find a way to subdivide
innermost panes into smaller grids.
Can there be grids inside Widgets which have been acted upon by an outer grid?
When I see widgets that take up the full width or full height of an area I usually use pack since since it's specifically designed to lay objects along a side of an empty cavity. You can use grid but it requires extra code since you have to both add the widget and configure the rows and columns. With pack all you have to do is add the widgets.
For example, it's clear you want a statusbar along the bottom, and a toolbar along the time, and a paned widget in-between. So, start with that, as in the following example:
import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()
root.geometry("600x400")
toolbar = tk.Frame(root, background="#d5e8d4", height=40)
statusbar = tk.Frame(root, background="#e3e3e3", height=20)
main = tk.PanedWindow(root, background="#99fb99")
toolbar.pack(side="top", fill="x")
statusbar.pack(side="bottom", fill="x")
main.pack(side="top", fill="both", expand=True)
root.mainloop()
Note: widths, heights, and colors are added to the frame for illustrative purposes since otherwise, an empty frame would have a size of 1x1. Once you add widgets inside a frame you can remove the width and height options.
You say the right will have a paned window, so add that on the right. We'll use a normal frame on the left.
left_pane = tk.Frame(main, background="#99fb99", width=100)
right_pane = tk.PanedWindow(main, background="#99fb99", width=200)
main.add(left_pane)
main.add(right_pane)
Next, add the two panes to the right. So that I can show colors with as little code as possible I'll use a frame on the top instead of a notebook:
notebook = tk.Frame(right_pane, background="#99ceff", height=70)
bottom_right = tk.Frame(right_pane, background="#ffe6cd", height=50)
right_pane.add(notebook)
right_pane.add(bottom_right)
With all that being said, you can use grid if you want. The trick is to use intermediate frames, since the layout in any widget is independent of the layout in parent or child widgets.
All you need to do is remove the first three calls to pack and replace it with these five lines:
root.grid_rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
root.grid_columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
toolbar.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky="ew")
main.grid(row=1, column=0, sticky="nsew")
statusbar.grid(row=2, column=0, sticky="ew")
Since the other widgets are children of paned widgets, there's nothing else to do. Any widgets you add to each pane have their own independent layout area, so you can use grid, pack, or place inside each frame.
To illustrate that point, I'll use grid to add several rows and columns of squares:
for row in range(6):
for column in range(30):
f = tk.Frame(bottom_right, background="white",
bd=2, relief="raised", width=10, height=10)
f.grid(row=row, column=column)
I found a post that's around two years old, which might be a little too old for your uses, but it has some information on nesting grids in Tkinter. It recommends using frames to nest the grids, essentially having children within children of a frame. Within these frames, you can place objects.
I know this isn't the first time a question like this is asked, but even after like 2 hours of browsing the Internet I can't get it to work:
So I'm trying to create a Tkinter-Frame, that contains several Buttons (As Example I took 30). But Because I don't have enough space in my program, I need to add an Scrollbar next to it, so that one can scroll through the Buttons.
The Problems I had where, that the inner "moving part" of the bar was as big as the whole scrollbar and couldn't be moved, which I kinda solved by using scollregion=(0,0,1000,1000), but even then the moving of the bar had no effect on the canvas whatsoever.
Here Is the corresponding code that I extracted out of my program:
import Tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()
root.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
root.columnconfigure(0, weight=50)
root.columnconfigure(1, weight=1)
root.minsize(300,400)
root.maxsize(300,400)
#Buttons
buttonFrame = tk.Canvas(root, bg='#bbb')
buttonFrame.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky=tk.N+tk.E+tk.S+tk.W)
buttonFrame.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
scroll = tk.Scrollbar(root, command=buttonFrame.yview)
scroll.grid(row=0, column=1, sticky=tk.N+tk.E+tk.S+tk.W)
buttonFrame.configure(yscrollcommand=scroll.set)
for i in range(30):
tk.Button(buttonFrame, text=str(i+1)).grid(row=i, column=0, sticky=tk.N+tk.E+tk.S+tk.W)
root.mainloop()
As you (hopefully) see, the slider can't even be moved nor does it change anything on the canvas, even if I squeeze a scrollregion=(bla) somewhere in there.
2 Questions:
a.) What do I need to add (or remove), so that I can scroll through the list of Buttons
b.) Does the fix from a. still work when I make the Scrollbar a child of the buttonFrame instead of the root?
To add widgets to a Canvas you have to use the create_window method, not grid(). Then you have to update the canvas before setting the scrollregion.
for i in range(30):
btn = tk.Button(buttonFrame, text=str(i+1))
buttonFrame.create_window((100,i*50), window=btn)
root.update()
buttonFrame.config(scrollregion=buttonFrame.bbox("all"))
If you try that I suspect it's not what you were looking for, since the create_window method requires absolute positioning (you can't use grid or pack). That's why most people put a Frame in the Canvas, and add their widgets to that instead. Many people have abstracted this faux Frame that is actually a Frame in a Canvas in another Frame, including me.
Here's my program:
import tkinter as tk
#Create main window object
root = tk.Tk()
#build GUI
for i in range(5):
tk.Label(root, text="hello", height=0).grid(row=i)
#mainloop
root.mainloop()
It produces the following (running in Xubuntu 16.04 LTS)
Notice all that extra vertical space between the lines of text. I don't want that! How do I decrease it?
If I run this code instead:
import tkinter as tk
#Create main window object
root = tk.Tk()
#build GUI
for i in range(5):
tk.Label(root, text="hello", height=0).grid(row=i)
tk.Grid.rowconfigure(root, i, weight=1) #allow vertical compression/expansion to fit window size after manual resizing
#mainloop
root.mainloop()
...it opens up and initially looks exactly the same as before, but now I can manually drag the box vertically to shrink it, like so:
Notice how much more vertically-compressed it is! But, how do I do this programatically, so I don't have to manually drag it to make it this way? I want to set this tight vertical spacing from the start, but no matter which parameters I change in Label, grid, or rowconfigure I can't seem to make it work without me manually dragging the box with the mouse to resize and vertically compress the text.
There are many ways to affect vertical spacing.
When you use grid or pack there are options for padding (eg: pady, ipady, minsize). Also, the widget itself has many options which control its appearance. For example, in the case of a label you can set the borderwidth, highlightthickness and pady values to zero in order to make the widget less tall.
Different systems have different default values for these various options, and for some of the options the default is something bigger than zero. When trying to configure the visual aspects of your GUI, the first step is to read the documentation, and look for options that affect the visual appearance. Then, you can start experimenting with them to see which ones give you the look that you desire.
In your specific case, this is about the most compact you can get:
label = tk.Label(root, highlightthickness=0, borderwidth=0, pady=0, text="hello")
label.grid(row=i, pady=0, ipady=0)
You can programatically modify the geometry just before starting the main loop instead of manually dragging it (change 0.6 to whatever % reduction you want):
import tkinter as tk
#Create main window object
root = tk.Tk()
#build GUI
for i in range(5):
label = tk.Label(root, text = 'hello')
label.grid(row=i)
tk.Grid.rowconfigure(root, i, weight=1) #allow vertical compression/expansion to fit window size after manual resizing
#mainloop
root.update()
root.geometry("{}x{}".format(root.winfo_width(), int(0.6*root.winfo_height())))
root.mainloop()
Here is a screenshot of the result running on Xubuntu 16.04 LTS with Python 3.5.2:
I'm trying to change the background color of a ttk frame and I've looked up other examples, but none have seemed to work. This is my code so far:
from Tkinter import *
import ttk
p = Tk()
p.geometry('600x350')
p.configure(bg='#334353')
gui_style = ttk.Style()
gui_style.configure('My.TButton', foreground='#334353')
gui_style.configure('My.TFrame', background='#334353')
frame = ttk.Frame(p, style='My.TFrame')
frame.grid(column=1, row=1)
ttk.Button(frame, text='test', style='My.TButton').grid(column=0, row=0)
ttk.Button(frame, text='Test 2', style='My.TButton').grid(column=3, row=3)
p.mainloop()
The window has the background color that I want, but the frame still has the default gray background. Is there something i need to add differently? I want the entire window except for the buttons to be the color #334353. How do I do this?
EDIT: I've attached what my window looks like. I don't want the gray. :/ (Note. I don't have enough rep to post images apparently, so here is a link to imgur with my current window: http://imgur.com/KyhbdMB
Your frame is only sized to the minimum size required to hold the two child windows (the buttons). It seems like you want the frame to fill the main window. When you grid the frame you should add the sticky option to have it expand to fill the available space (eg: frame.grid(column=1,row=1,sticky='news')). Then you need to have the parent allocate all the space space to this grid cell. For that you want to use the grid_rowconfigure and grid_columnconfigure methods for the parent window. In this case:
p.grid_columnconfigure(1, weight=1)
p.grid_rowconfigure(1, weight=1)
which tells the main frame grid geometry manager that spare space should be given to the cell and row 1 column 1. This will lead to your frame expanding to fill the window.
It works on my PC!
Try this:
Update your Python environment(Tested under Py 3.4 Windows 32bit)
Install the lastest TTK package