Version 1 of piemenu

Updated 2007-09-03 15:48:47 by dzach

A package to create pie menus.

Current version : Beta, 0.3, home [L1 ], download [L2 ], manual (draft) [L3 ]

This is an ongoing project. Hopefully this or some other incarnation of pie menus will prove to be a good widget for Tk. Missing antialias is a problem for good looking canvas shapes. Ideas and help are invited and welcome. dzach


This package provides a single command piemenu, in a similar manner with Tk's menu command. The piemenu command is used to create either a toplevel or a canvas menu. If the parent of the pathName provided at creation time is a canvas widget, then the pie menu is created in that canvas. Otherwise it is created in a new toplevel window.

Here is an example of how a pie menu looks like:

http://piemenu.sourceforge.net/images/piemenu4.png

Why use a pie menu ?

  • The main reason is because it's easy on touch screens, on mobile devices where simplicity matters.
  • It has different aesthetics than the usual rectangular popup or drop down menus, and can make tcl/tk look nice.
  • Round shapes are usually easier to the eye (can be easily made cluttered though, like everything else).
  • It can help give a mimimalistic appearence to an interface, when this is a requirement (e.g. OLPC's Sugar interface [L4 ]).
  • It gives the benefits of applying [Fitts's Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts_law ] to popup menus.

BUGS

The piemenu package code needs improvement, so bug reports and patches are welcome.


Category GUI | Category Widget