** Summary ** 

A '''widget''', also known as a 'control', is a visual or layout component of a
[GUI%|%graphical user interface (GUI)].  Like most other [GUI] toolkits, [Tk]
includes various widgets.

A gadget is a slightly different thing:

EE: From '''The X Window System: Programming And Applications With Xt,
OSF/Motif Edition''' by Douglas A. Young. (First edition, sixth printing,
published in 1990):

    :   In addition to widgets, Motif provides a user interface component known as a gadget. Gadgets are identical to widgets, except that they have no [window] of their own. A gadget must display text or graphics in the window provided by its parent, and must also rely on its parent for input. [[...]] From the application programmer's viewpoint, gadgets can be used exactly the same way as other display widgets, except for the following restrictions. Gadgets cannot support event handlers, translations, or popup children. Gadgets can support callback functions and have the same appearance as the corresponding widgets.

[DKF] 2002-12-17:  For a more modern example of the difference, Java Swing is
almost entirely gadget-based, whereas AWT is pretty-much completely
widget-based (though they use different terminology: lightweight and
heavyweight Components.)

** Disambiguation **

   [MegaWidget package%|%widget]:   a [Tk] [extension],  is a [megawidget] [framework] written by [JH%|%Jeff Hobbs].

   [tklib]:   includes a '''widget''' module, also by [JH%|%Jeff Hobbs]
   
** Description **

Most widgets have some sort of graphical representation, but some, i.e. [Tk]'s
[frame] and [labelframe], are containers, and are useful to achive some desired
layout.


** See Also **

   [Tk syntax help]:   a list of [Tk] specific commands, some of which are widgets

   [Blinking widgets]:   

   [Widget tags]:    

   [XPS]:    

<<categories>> GUI | Data Structure | Concept | Glossary | Widget | Package