Tk Commands

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
toolbar

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

Window Management edit

destroy
lower
option
raise
winfo
wm

Obsolete Widgets edit

menubar
pack-old

** Internal Variables

::tk::psglyphs
::tk::ps_preamble
::tk::AlwaysShowSelection

Internal Commands edit

::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

Misc edit

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

Category Command

Category Syntax

Arts and Crafts of Tcl-Tk Programming

Administration edit

Data edit

Dialogues edit

Event Management edit

Inter-Process Communication edit

Facilities edit

Fonts edit

Geometry edit

Control edit

Reference edit

ttk edit

Variables edit

environment variables

Widgets edit

Additional Widgets edit

Window Management edit

Obsolete Widgets edit

Internal Commands edit

See Also edit

Misc edit