Managing the window size (and layout) in Tcl/Tk

Complex window layouts are comprised in a series of simple window layouts nested within each other - as an example I wrote today on our Tcl/Tk course. You can see a capture of this display in with this article.

The buttons on the left are in a frame of their own, and the graphic area ("Canvas") across on the right is in a separate frame - the frames being named .left and .right, and the widgets within them things like .left.mkm and .left.quit and .right.graph, so that the geomentry manager knows where they fit in the heirarcy.

One of the requirements of this appliaction is that we limit resizing so that the GUI window cannot be shrunk below its initial size, and we've done that using the following code:

  set size [wm geometry .]

  regexp {(\d+)x(\d+)} $size all w h

  wm minsize . $w $h

Which is reading the size that the window is initially set to, and then saying that the window manager should not reduce below that. One thing you need to be sure of before you ask for the size of the window is that it has actually been renedered on the screen, and as Tk only draws when its event loop is empty, or on specific request, you will probably need to add:
update idletasks
in your code just before asking for the geometry size.

Complete source code at [here]. Other examples of nested frames at [here] and [here].

(written 2015-03-12, updated 2015-03-15)

Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles

T220 - Tcl/Tk - Frames and Other Topics
  [787] Tk - laying out your GUI with frames, pack and grid - (2006-06-30)
  [1335] Expanding a grid - Tcl/Tk - (2007-09-07)
  [1471] Cliff Lift simulator- Lynton to Lynmouth - in Tcl/Tk - (2007-12-14)

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