Combo boxes in Ruby-Tk

ruby-talk
1

I'm a newcomer to Ruby, though a seasoned campaigner in Perl, and I'm
finding my feet, so please be nice!

I've been playing around with the Tk extension. The section on Ruby Tk in
the pickaxe book is sketchy to say the least. I do have a well-thumbed
copy of Learning Perl/Tk, so I know my way around the basics.

My question is: is there any way in Ruby Tk to implement combo boxes?
Neither BrowseEdit nor JComboBox seem to work.

Rosie

2

Rosalind Mitchell wrote:

I'm a newcomer to Ruby, though a seasoned campaigner in Perl, and I'm
finding my feet, so please be nice!

I've been playing around with the Tk extension. The section on Ruby Tk in
the pickaxe book is sketchy to say the least. I do have a well-thumbed
copy of Learning Perl/Tk, so I know my way around the basics.

My question is: is there any way in Ruby Tk to implement combo boxes?
Neither BrowseEdit nor JComboBox seem to work.

Rosie

I'm a little surprised that nobody managed to come up with an answer to
this.

Is Tk really a hopeless case with Ruby? If it is, what alternative GUI
manager would you suggest?

Rosie

3

Hi!

In Brent B. Welsh's book "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk" 4th ed. the index redirects "combobox" to "spinbox" (new in Tcl/Tk version 8.4 IIRC):

require 'tk'

TkSpinbox.new do
   from -2
   to 2
   pack
end

TkSpinbox.new do
   from -2
   to 2
   increment 0.1
   pack
end

TkSpinbox.new do
   @states=["Arizona", "California", "New Mexico"]
   values @states
   wrap 1
   pack
end

TkButton.new do
   text "Quit"
   command "exit"
   pack
end

Tk.mainloop

Hope, that helps.

Julian

···

Am 02.04.2007 um 10:55 schrieb Rosalind Mitchell:

Rosalind Mitchell wrote:

I'm a newcomer to Ruby, though a seasoned campaigner in Perl, and I'm
finding my feet, so please be nice!

I've been playing around with the Tk extension. The section on Ruby Tk in
the pickaxe book is sketchy to say the least. I do have a well-thumbed
copy of Learning Perl/Tk, so I know my way around the basics.

My question is: is there any way in Ruby Tk to implement combo boxes?
Neither BrowseEdit nor JComboBox seem to work.

Rosie

I'm a little surprised that nobody managed to come up with an answer to
this.

Is Tk really a hopeless case with Ruby? If it is, what alternative GUI
manager would you suggest?

Rosie

4

That's an interesting example, but are spin boxes really the same as combo boxes? The OP may also want to look at Tk::Iwidgets::Combobox. Here is a minimal example.

<code>
require 'tk'
require 'tkextlib/iwidgets'

DEBUG =
COLORS = %w[red green blue cyan yellow magenta black white]

begin
    root = TkRoot.new {title 'Ruby/Tk Combo Box'}
    cbx = Tk::Iwidgets::Combobox.new(root) {
       labeltext "Colors:"
       pack :pady => 10
    }
    cbx.insert_entry(0, COLORS.first)
    COLORS.each { |color| cbx.insert_list('end', color) }
    btn = TkButton.new do
       text "Quit"
       command { Tk.root.destroy }
       pack
    end

    win_w, win_h = 300, 80
    win_l = (TkWinfo.screenwidth('.') - win_w) / 2
    root.geometry("#{win_w}x#{win_h}+#{win_l}+50")
    root.resizable(false, false)

    # Make Cmnd+Q work as expected on Mac OS X.
    root.bind('Command-q') { Tk.root.destroy }

    Tk.mainloop
ensure
    puts DEBUG unless DEBUG.empty?
end
</code>

Regards, Morton

···

On Apr 2, 2007, at 6:03 AM, Julian Schnidder wrote:

In Brent B. Welsh's book "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk" 4th ed. the index redirects "combobox" to "spinbox" (new in Tcl/Tk version 8.4 IIRC):

require 'tk'

TkSpinbox.new do
  from -2
  to 2
  pack
end

TkSpinbox.new do
  from -2
  to 2
  increment 0.1
  pack
end

TkSpinbox.new do
  @states=["Arizona", "California", "New Mexico"]
  values @states
  wrap 1
  pack
end

TkButton.new do
  text "Quit"
  command "exit"
  pack
end

Tk.mainloop

Hope, that helps.

Julian

5

Message-ID: <8DF5D16F-2868-4D1D-ADE8-67CB5F18F03A@ameritech.net>

That's an interesting example, but are spin boxes really the same as
combo boxes? The OP may also want to look at Tk::Iwidgets::Combobox.
Here is a minimal example.

Please see 'ext/sample/tkcombobox.rb' on Ruby source tree also. :wink:

···

From: Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@ameritech.net>
Subject: Re: Combo boxes in Ruby-Tk
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 09:41:03 +0900
--
Hidetoshi NAGAI (nagai@ai.kyutech.ac.jp)

6

Morton Goldberg wrote:

That's an interesting example, but are spin boxes really the same as
combo boxes? The OP may also want to look at Tk::Iwidgets::Combobox.

Thank you - that seems to do the trick.

Rosie