[Tkinter-discuss] A function to allow easier use of gridding in Tk widgets.

[Kenneth McDonald]

I poked around in Tkinter, but couldn't find a way to make use of Tk's 
ability
to specify grid layouts in a formatted way which gives a sort of a 
textual
visual representation of the actual layout. Here's a little function 
which does
this. Sorry, at the moment everything is inserted with sticky='news', 
and
you still have to do column/row weighting the old way. I haven't used 
this
much, so be on the lookout for bugs.

Ken

-------------------------------
def grid(specs, sticky='news', widget=None):
     '''
     Function to allow easy use of Tk's formatted gridding specification.

     Example:

             ...
             title=Label(self, text='Title', background='lightgray', 
justify='left', relief='groove')
             itext = Text(self, width=width)
             itext.configure(yscrollcommand=hscroll.set, 
xscrollcommand=vscroll.set)
             vscroll.configure(command=itext.xview)
             hscroll.configure(command=itext.yview)
             grid([
                 [title,     '-'     ],
                 [itext,     vscroll ],
                 [hscroll,    '^'     ]
                 ])
            ...

     results in a title occupying row 0, columns 0-1; a text object
     in row=1, column=0; a horizontal scrollbar in row=2, col=0;
     and a vertical scrollbar in rows=1-2, col=1. '-' indicates
     carry cell in previous column into this column, '^' indicates
     carry call in previous row into this row. 'x' can be used
     to indicate a grid cell that should be left empty.
     See the Tk 'grid' man page for more details.
     '''

     # If we aren't passed a widget via which to call
     # from tk, we need to find one. The only reason
     # to pass in a widget is efficiency, and I doubt
     # that it would make any perceptible difference
     # anyway.
     tk = None
     if widget==None:
         for row in specs:
             for cell in row:
                 if type(cell) != type(""):
                     tk = cell.tk
                     break
             if tk:
                 break
     else: tk=widget.tk

     for row in specs:
         tkrow = []
         for cell in row:
             if cell=='-' or cell=='^' or cell=='x':
                 tkrow.append(cell)
             else:
                 tkrow.append(cell._w)
         if sticky:
             tkrow.append('-sticky')
             tkrow.append(sticky)
         tk.call('grid', *tkrow)