Tcl / Tk. Thematic TTK widgets and designer TKproE-2.20

Looking through my notes on GUI design using Tk widgets, I felt some sort of dissatisfaction. And the thing turned out to be that I actually missed the work with thematic widgets ttk (themed tk). They were casually involved when reviewing the Tkinter package for Python and using the Page designer. It was about the TNotebook widget (notepad, notebook) from the ttk package.

The TNotebook widget is one of the new widgets, along with TCombobox, TProgressbar, TSeparator and TSizegrip, which appeared in ttk. Converting applications from classic tk to ttk may require minimal effort. Sometimes it is enough instead of, for example, button to write ttk :: buton. Separately, I want to say about the combobox. If you used a spinbox widget in your applications written in tk and now replace it with ttk :: combobox, then the application will display this widget that you missed so much:



But nevertheless the main thing in ttk, it is not new widgets, but their design (ited). Customizing themes styles deserves a separate discussion. And here I would send the developers to the wonderful tutorial published just a few days ago (11.11.2017):
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Despite the fact that it is written in German, but I do not even know English, I read it with great pleasure. As they say, written for the "fool."

We are interested in whether there is an integrated development environment / designers for ttk widgets. If we talk about Python and Tkinter, then this is the Page package . This package supports both classic widgets and theme widgets. True, for some reason, there is no support for TSeparator separators. The design environment is the Tcl scripting language. It is for this reason that we will return to this package. Note the undoubted advantage of Page is the presence of an easel on which you can easily and conveniently place widgets.

But this is for Python, and we are interested in the final product on Tcl. It turned out that exactly one year ago (November 27, 2016), Tcl / Tk designer TKproE 2.20 was announced :



And there are TSeparator separators in it. A unique feature of this designer is that it accepts almost any tcl / tk script.
To demonstrate the capabilities of both ttk widgets and TKproE-2.20 designer, a GUI interface was developed for the pp “elegant print” utility from the NSS package with eliminated jambs and support for Russian pki (public key infrastructure) oid. Moreover, such a utility for viewing certificates, including qualified certificates , viewing the electronic signature of a document, is in demand. And it was for her that the graphical interface was designed and implemented using TKproE:



Utility and graphic binding to it can be downloaded here . Another very pleasant surprise, unlike other designers, was waiting when working with image (image) and icons. If earlier it was necessary to “transfer” the image to PEM-encoding and insert the code into the script itself, now it is enough to specify the image file and TKproE will take it and convert it:



The only inconvenience here is the need to enter the file name. But it turned out to be easy to fix. It is enough in the tkproe.tc l script in lines 7474 and 7516 code (procedure proc ShowWindow.tpimages )

label .tpimages.propbitmap.frame14.label12 -activebackground {#dcdcdc} \ -anchor {w} - background {#dcdcdc} -borderwidth {2} -font {Helvetica 10} \ -highlightbackground {#dcdcdc} -text {File:} -width {10} 

replace with code:

 button .tpimages.propbitmap.frame14.label12 -activebackground {#dcdcdc} \ -anchor {w} -background {#dcdcdc} -borderwidth {2} -font {Helvetica 10} \ -highlightbackground {#dcdcdc} -text {File:} -width {10} \ -command { global userDir; set fileTypes {{"File image" *}}; \ set file [tk_getOpenFile -title "Find Image" -filetypes $fileTypes \ -initialdir "$userDir"]; \ .tpimages.propphoto.frame14.entry13 delete 0 end; \ .tpimages.propphoto.frame14.entry13 insert end $file; } 

To make the file selection start from the home directory after line 5, add the following code to the tkproe.tcl script:

 global userDir set userDir $env(HOME) 

Now, to select a file with an image, simply click the “File:” button:



Those interested can improve this code, for example, fill in the “Format” field by the selected file, or vice versa, organize the file search by format, considering the format as a file extension (“File type” in the screenshot).

Another inconvenience that I had to face was getting the user's home directory, for example, mHOME set $ env (HOME). And the home directory, as a rule, is needed to provide a platform independent script. It turned out through TKproE insert it nowhere. Global variables in TKproE are defined through the TPinitVars procedure. Naturally, if you define the mHOME variable through the field of global variables:



then the mHome variable will have the value "$ env (HOME)". It would seem, take and insert the calculation of the current directory handles in the main body of the script. You can, if only you no longer edit the script in TKproE. Otherwise, TKproE will take care of the optimization and instead of the set nHOME code $ env (HOME) will insert the code with the home directory of the computer on which the script was created / corrected into the procedure of global variables initialization. It's horrible.

It had to climb into the code TKproE for the second time. We found a way out of this situation in the definition of the global variable myHOME and the inclusion of additional code in the generated script. And so, in the proc TP_Clone_app procedure immediately following the line (13th):

 set outstr "# Generated by TKproE $TPinfo(revision) - [clock format [clock seconds]]\n\n" 

add row

 append outstr "#Add me\nencoding system utf-8\nglobal myHOME\nset myHOME \$env(HOME)\n\n" 

and in the proc TP_Clone_variables procedure after the line (10th)

  foreach varname $varlist { 

insert code

 if { $varname == "myHOME" } { continue } 

which disables the resetting of the myHOME global variable.

And after these improvements, we managed to create a graphical shell for the PP utility:



If you select the file with the document and click the "Show in window" button, we will see the following:



A certificate printout, like any other document, can be saved in a file (the “Save to file” button on the “Certificates, etc.” tab).
The GUIPP script source code, which is also the TKproE project, can be downloaded here .

Above, we talked about going back to the Page designer. In the Page designer it is very convenient to design a GUI with free placement of widgets (place). As already mentioned, the GUI Project Page designer stores as a Tcl / Tk script, and it would be tempting to use a ready-made script from Page in TKproE or to add it manually. In its pure form, the project from Page cannot be executed or loaded into TKproE-2.20. To eliminate this “injustice”, a tcl script was developed, which leads projects from Page to tcl / tk scripts to be executed:

 sh-4.3$ ./fromPageToTcl.tcl Usage: ./fromPageToTcl.tcl <file tcl from Page> sh-4.3$ 

Here is the code for the tcl script fromPageToTcl.tcl:


And so, take an example from the ~ / page / examples / complex folder and get the executable tcl script via the fromPageToTcl.tcl script:

 sh-4.3$cd ~/page/examples/complex sh-4.3$ ./fromPageToTcl.tcl complex.tcl > complex_new.tcl sh-4.3$ 

Now, to get a really good code, open the complex_new.tcl script in the TKproE-2.20 designer and remove all the unnecessary procedures from the project now, and this is the Window procedure and all procedures with the vTcl prefix, and resave it:



Note that Page supports more “Scrolled widgets”, we naturally do not support them.

In general, the designer TKproE left a very good impression and it’s nice to work with him on GUI development. The Page x TKproE x fromPageToTcl.tcl trio, consisting of Page designers, TKproE designers and the fromPageToTcl.tcl script, is simply a great trio.