Version 5 of Mac style tables with tablelist

TR - Often, Mac applications use tables for data display. The incredible tablelist widget goes a long way in supporting a good native look under the Aqua environment. Using the tablelist_tile package, you get them using the following command:

 package require tile
 package require tablelist_tile 4.8
 tablelist::tablelist .table -columns {0 "first column" 0 "second column" 0 "third column"} -stretch all -relief flat -labelrelief flat -showseparators 0 -borderwidth 0
 # packing left to make space for the scrollbar, leaving some extra space at the bottom because of the sizegrip:
 pack .table -fill both -expand 1 -side left -pady {0 20}

But there is one drawback. Vertical scrollbars around this tablelist will appear beside the table whereas the Aqua tables have this scrollbar appear under a separate column-like header (tha example is talen from Apple's Mail program):

To mimic this with tablelist too, you just need to put the scrollbar into a separate frame and add a little ttk::label on top of the scrollbar. Note, that we don't use ttk::scrollbar but tk's scrollbar, since the tile scrollbar does not (yet) have a native look (see also Perfect Aqua Look):

 frame .f -borderwidth 0
 scrollbar .f.sy -orient vertical -command [list .table yview] -elementborderwidth 1
 # Create small widget for the upper right corner:
 ttk::label .f.corner -style TablelistHeader.TLabel
 pack .f.corner -side top -fill x
 pack .f.sy -side top -fill y -expand 1
 pack .f -side right -fill y -pady {0 20}
 .table configure -yscrollcommand [list .f.sy set]

Note here, that the extra label has a custm style: 'TablelistHeader.TLabel'. This is the style used by tablelist 4.8 to make the table headers look native on the Mac. This is how it looks like:

The only visible difference is that the header separators are a bit too wide or not so sharp, and the column separators (when drawn with '-showseparators 1') will not appear exactly under the header separators but shifted a bit to the right. (When you also need horizontal scrollbars, you should rather use the grid layout manager instead of pack.)

Csaba Nemethi 2007-11-03: Very nice work! That visual difference is no longer present in the newest CVS version of Tablelist.

Category GUI | Category widget | Category Mac