[Tutor] Mulltiple TK frames

[Alan Gauld]

"Hazlett, Les" <les.hazlett at navteq.com> wrote

> No doubt the widow vs. frame terminology is simpe

A Window is a GUI concept, it is the thing with the
iconify/delete buttons and title bar. A Frame is literally
a container for other widgets. Its conventional to create
your Windows with a Frame as the top widget that
contains all others.

For a simple example look at the Grammer checkerr
GUI in my tutorial Case Study. It has 3 frames in a
single window.

> Knowing that I am still confused by the window vs.
> frame terminology, let me use the term "userform"

Form is common terminology in Visual Basic and
Delphi so thats not a bad term to use for a window
within an application. It encompasses both application
level windows and dialog boxes etc.

> What I want is, no doubt, ordinary.  I want to display
> a "userform" asking the user to enter a folder path.

OK, That would normally be done using the standard
folder dialog. It uses the usual OS Windows style dialog
with a tree widget and returns the folder name the user
selects.

Look here for more on the common dialogs:

http://www-acc.kek.jp/WWW-ACC-exp/KEKB/control/Activity/Python/TkIntro/introduction/intro08.htm

I'm amazed nobody has documented these in the standard library
yet. They seem to be something of a secret in the Tkinter community!
They andle the normal File-Open, File-SaveAs, Choose Folder type
tasks needed in most GUI apps.

> "Continue" button, I want to get the directory of what is inside
> tthe selected folder and show a different "userform" with check
> buttons for subordinate folders.

Couldn't you use the normal Ctrl-Click/Shift click methods of
selecting multiple folders using the standard dialogs? They can
return a list of names if you ask them to...

> second "userform", I want to do some (no need to explain) things to 
> the
> selected folders and then show a third "userform" with summary
> information about folder/file sizes and run time.

Can I suggest a different scheme?

One Form on startup, with a button, or menu option (or both) that
opens a standard chooser dialog which returns a list of folders.
That same form also has a display widget (Text maybe?) that
gets filled with the result of your processing.

This is the conventional style of GUI application and should
seem normal to your users.

> I would love to see a simple sample that uses multiple
> "userforms".

Try the IDLE editor. It has several popup dialogs etc.
It is written in Tkinter.

> I will keep reading about Tk.  What reference would
> you recommend.  I have the Wesley Chun Core Python
> Programming book.

The best references are:

Fred Lundh's tutorial and reference (but doesn't cover standard 
dialogs!)
- linked from the Tkinter section on the Python web site.
The link I posted above
Grayson's book "Python & Tkinter Programming"

For generic info about building GUIs you could skim my GUI topic too,
its very thin but does cover the basics.

HTH,

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld