Pmw.ScrolledText

Name

Pmw.ScrolledText() - text widget with optional scrollbars

Inherits

Pmw.MegaWidget

Description

This megawidget consists of a standard text widget with optional scrollbars which can be used to scroll the text widget. The scrollbars can be dynamic, which means that a scrollbar will only be displayed if it is necessary. That is, if the text widget does not contain enough text (either horizontally or vertically), the scrollbar will be automatically hidden.

Options

Options for this megawidget and its base classes are described below.

borderframe

Initialisation option. If true, the borderframe component will be created. The default is 0.

hscrollmode

The horizontal scroll mode. If 'none', the horizontal scrollbar will never be displayed. If 'static', the scrollbar will always be displayed. If 'dynamic', the scrollbar will be displayed only if necessary. The default is 'dynamic'.

labelmargin

Initialisation option. If the labelpos option is not None, this specifies the distance between the label component and the rest of the megawidget. The default is 0.

labelpos

Initialisation option. Specifies where to place the label component. If not None, it should be a concatenation of one or two of the letters 'n', 's', 'e' and 'w'. The first letter specifies on which side of the megawidget to place the label. If a second letter is specified, it indicates where on that side to place the label. For example, if labelpos is 'w', the label is placed in the center of the left hand side; if it is 'wn', the label is placed at the top of the left hand side; if it is 'ws', the label is placed at the bottom of the left hand side.

If None, a label component is not created. The default is None.

scrollmargin

Initialisation option. The distance between the scrollbars and the text widget. The default is 2.

usehullsize

Initialisation option. If true, the size of the megawidget is determined solely by the width and height options of the hull component.

Otherwise, the size of the megawidget is determined by the width and height of the text component, along with the size and/or existence of the other components, such as the label, the scrollbars and the scrollmargin option. All these affect the overall size of the megawidget. The default is 0.

vscrollmode

The vertical scroll mode. If 'none', the vertical scrollbar will never be displayed. If 'static', the scrollbar will always be displayed. If 'dynamic', the scrollbar will be displayed only if necessary. The default is 'dynamic'.

Components

Components created by this megawidget and its base classes are described below.

borderframe

A frame widget which snuggly fits around the text widget, to give the appearance of a text border. It is created with a border so that the text widget, which is created without a border, looks like it has a border. By default, this component is a Tkinter.Frame.

horizscrollbar

The horizontal scrollbar. By default, this component is a Tkinter.Scrollbar. Its component group is Scrollbar.

hull

This acts as the body for the entire megawidget. Other components are created as children of the hull to further specialise the widget. By default, this component is a Tkinter.Frame.

label

If the labelpos option is not None, this component is created as a text label for the megawidget. See the labelpos option for details. Note that to set, for example, the text option of the label, you need to use the label_text component option. By default, this component is a Tkinter.Label.

text

The text widget which is scrolled by the scrollbars. If the borderframe option is true, this is created with a borderwidth of 0 to overcome a known problem with text widgets: if a widget inside a text widget extends across one of the edges of the text widget, then the widget obscures the border of the text widget. Therefore, if the text widget has no border, then this overlapping does not occur. By default, this component is a Tkinter.Text.

vertscrollbar

The vertical scrollbar. By default, this component is a Tkinter.Scrollbar. Its component group is Scrollbar.

Methods

Only methods specific to this megawidget are described below. For a description of its inherited methods, see the manuals for its base classes. In addition, methods from the Tkinter.Text class are forwarded by this megawidget to the text component.

bbox(index)

This method is explicitly forwarded to the text component's bbox() method. Without this explicit forwarding, the bbox() method (aliased to grid_bbox()) of the hull would be invoked, which is probably not what the programmer intended.

clear()

Delete all text from the text component.

exportfile(fileName)

Write the contents of the text component to the file fileName.

get(first = None, last = None)

This is the same as the get() method of the text component, except that if first is None the entire contents of the text widget are returned.

importfile(fileName, where = 'end')

Read the contents of the file fileName and insert into the text component at the position given by where.

settext(text)

Replace the entire contents of the text component with text.

Example

The image at the top of this manual is a snapshot of the window (or part of the window) produced by the following code.

class Demo:
    def __init__(self, parent):
        # Create the ScrolledText.
        self.st = Pmw.ScrolledText(parent,
                borderframe = 1,
                labelpos = 'n',
                label_text='ScrolledText.py',
                usehullsize = 1,
                hull_width = 400,
                hull_height = 300,
                text_padx = 10,
                text_pady = 10,
                text_wrap='none'
        )

        # Create a group widget to contain the scrollmode options.
        w = Pmw.Group(parent, tag_text='Scroll mode')
        w.pack(side = 'bottom', padx = 5, pady = 5)

        hmode = Pmw.OptionMenu(w.interior(),
                labelpos = 'w',
                label_text = 'Horizontal:',
                items = ['none', 'static', 'dynamic'],
                command = self.sethscrollmode,
                menubutton_width = 8,
        )
        hmode.pack(side = 'left', padx = 5, pady = 5)
        hmode.invoke('dynamic')

        vmode = Pmw.OptionMenu(w.interior(),
                labelpos = 'w',
                label_text = 'Vertical:',
                items = ['none', 'static', 'dynamic'],
                command = self.setvscrollmode,
                menubutton_width = 8,
        )
        vmode.pack(side = 'left', padx = 5, pady = 5)
        vmode.invoke('dynamic')

        # Pack this last so that the buttons do not get shrunk when
        # the window is resized.
        self.st.pack(padx = 5, pady = 5, fill = 'both', expand = 1)

        # Read this file into the text widget.
        head, tail = os.path.split(sys.argv[0])
        self.st.importfile(os.path.join(head,'ScrolledText.py'))

        self.st.insert('end', '\nThis demonstrates how to\n' +
            'add a window to a text widget:  ')
        counter = Pmw.Counter(self.st.component('text'),
            entryfield_value = 9999)
        self.st.window_create('end', window = counter)

    def sethscrollmode(self, tag):
        self.st.configure(hscrollmode = tag)

    def setvscrollmode(self, tag):
        self.st.configure(vscrollmode = tag)