Tk Commands

Tk Commands is a list of commands that are built-in to Tk.

Administration

console

loadTk

tk

Data

image

bitmap

photo

Dialogues

tk_chooseColor

tk_chooseDirectory

tk_dialog

tk_getOpenFile

tk_getSaveFile

tk_messageBox

Event Management

bind

bindtags

event

tkwait

Inter-Process Communication

send

Facilities

clipboard

tkerror

Fonts

font

Geometry

grid

pack

place

Control

bell

grab

focus

selection

tk_focusNext

tk_focusPrev

tk_focusFollowsMouse

tk_menuSetFocus

palette

tk_bisque

tk_setPalette

tk_textCopy

tk_textCut

tk_textPaste

Reference

colors

cursors

options

keysyms

tkvars

ttk

In Tk 8.5, the Ttk package becomes a part of the Tk distribution. Special information on some of these tile/ttk widgets:

tk::classic::restore

ttk::combobox

ttk::scale

Variables

Reserved variables are (incomplete):

tk_library

tk_strictMotif

tk_version

environment variables

There are also some environment variables.

Widgets

button

canvas

checkbutton

entry

frame

label

labelframe

listbox

menu

menubutton

message

panedwindow

radiobutton

scale

scrollbar

spinbox

text

tk_optionMenu

tk_popup

toplevel

all the Ttk commands

Additional Widgets

HTML widgets

tklib's widget package contains the following megawidgets:

dialog

(a)synchronous dialog shell with core dialog handling

menuentry

entry with dropdown menu

panelframe

ruler

screenruler

this is cool, really!

scrolledwindow

statusbar

for easier handling of bottom status items, with corner resize control

superframe

an enhanced labelframe widget

toolbar

Many third-party widgets are Snidgets. See that page for a list of Snidgets.

Window Management

destroy

lower

option

raise

winfo

wm

Obsolete Widgets

menubar

pack-old

** Internal Variables

::tk::psglyphs

::tk::ps_preamble

::tk::AlwaysShowSelection

Internal Commands

::tk::ConsoleInvoke

::tk::ConsoleSource

::tk::ConsoleExit

::tk::ConsoleHistory

::tk::ensure_psenc_is_loaded

an empty procedure that can be called to auto-load the postscript features of Tk

::tk::CreatePostscriptEncoding

::tk::ps::literal

::tk::ps::variable

::tk::ps::function

::tk::SetFocusGrab

::tk::RestoreFocusGrab

See Also

megawidget

Tcl syntax

Widgets in the initial Tk package

images of the various widgets.

Tk glossary

Explains some terms occurring in the manpages.

widget

general information widgets.

Tk widget sticky discussion

Misc

Note that in Tk, one has several ways one can control visual aspects of widgets:

• externally, via the X resource database
• at creation time, on the command line
• later, using the -config option
• via the option database
• in some cases, via special objects, like font

[are there other ways of influencing these?]

One must be certain to keep some things in mind when writing widget code:

• Widget names are generally a series of period separated names. [Can someone write more text here concerning the naming of widgets, naming hierarchy and what is for, how it contrasts with namespaces, etc.]
• If your widget names might have spaces in them, be certain to treat the names carefully, in particular when using eval, subst, etc.
• DKF writes in comp.lang.tcl:

It's also not a good idea at all to start a widget name part with a capital letter (because that style of name is reserved for the names of widget classes, and you *really* don't want to get those two mixed up.) But it's usually really easy to start with a lower-case letter and use alphanumeric for the rest...

• Jeff Hobbs writes in comp.lang.tcl:

[Using :: as characters in a widgets name as a] problem is much more difficult to get around for megawidget authors than the space one. Properly treating things as lists solves the space problem. However, the use of namespaces for megawidget building is common in order to encapsulate code / hide the ickies from the user. That conflicts with the use of ::. It is possible to rename the :: parts when you use namespaces, but then it becomes cumbersome to map back and forth.

RS: As each widget defines a command with its name, can't interp aliases be used to map fancy to real names? E.g.

interp alias {} foo::bar {} .top.frame1.bar.canvas

LV: So, if someone has a string that they are certain is a name of a widget, is there introspection that can be used to determine what widget it is?

escargo 2005-08-16: I would expect winfo exists should be able to answer that question.

LV: winfo exists just tells me if the widget exists - not what kind of a widget it is. Thanks!

MG: How about winfo class $widgetName?

LV: That seems like it should work - thanks!

RS 2006-04-28: Here's a little helper to retrieve the default value of a widget attribute (use long names (-background) instead of the short ones (-bg)):

% proc get'default {w flag} {lindex [$w config $flag] 3}
% get'default $t -font
{MS Sans Serif} 8

The current value is of course returned by the cget method:

% $t cget -font
Courier 9