Geometry Managers: pack, grid, place¶

Geometry managers are ways to add widgets inside other widgets. For example, pack is a geometry manager. This page contains more information about pack and two other geometry managers.

Pack¶

This is a simple geometry manager useful for laying out big things. If you want to have two big widgets next to each other, this is the right choice.

Grid¶

This geometry manager is useful for making griddy things that would be hard or impossible to do with pack. Here is an example:

import teek


window = teek.Window("Calculator")

rows = [
    ['7', '8', '9', '*', '/'],
    ['4', '5', '6', '+', '-'],
    ['1', '2', '3', None, None],
    [None, None, '.', None, None],
]

for row_number, row in enumerate(rows):
    for column_number, text in enumerate(row):
        if text is not None:
            button = teek.Button(window, text, width=3)
            button.grid(row=row_number, column=column_number, sticky='nswe')

zerobutton = teek.Button(window, '0')
zerobutton.grid(row=3, column=0, columnspan=2, sticky='nswe')
equalbutton = teek.Button(window, '=')
equalbutton.grid(row=2, column=3, rowspan=2, columnspan=2, sticky='nswe')

for row_or_column in (window.grid_rows + window.grid_columns):
    row_or_column.config['weight'] = 1

window.on_delete_window.connect(teek.quit)
teek.run()

Let’s go through some of that line by line.

for row_number, row in enumerate(rows):
    for column_number, text in enumerate(row):

This is a way to loop over the row list with indexes. For example, if text is '*', then row_number is 0 and column_number is 3, because text is the fourth element of the first sublist of rows.

button.grid(row=row_number, column=column_number, sticky='nswe')

The sticky='nswe' makes the button fill all the space it has in the grid cell. The n means “north” (up), w means “west” (left), etc.

zerobutton.grid(row=3, column=0, columnspan=2, sticky='nswe')

columnspan=2 makes the button span two columns, so some of it is in one column, and rest of it is in the other. The default is columnspan=1.

for row_or_column in (window.grid_rows + window.grid_columns):
    row_or_column.config['weight'] = 1

This loops through all grid rows and columns of the widget, and makes everything stretch as the window is resized. Comment out these lines and resize the window to understand why I did this. See Grid Row and Column Objects below for details.

teek.Widget.grid(**kwargs)¶: Very similar to pack(). See grid configure in grid(3tk) for details.

teek.Widget.grid_forget()¶: See grid forget in grid(3tk).

teek.Widget.grid_info()¶

Very similar to pack_info(). The types of values are as follows:

The value of 'in' is a teek widget.
The values of 'ipadx' and 'ipady' are ScreenDistance objects.
The values of 'padx' and 'pady' are lists of ScreenDistance objects. Each list contains 1 or 2 items; see -padx in pack(3tk) for details.
The values of 'row', 'rowspan', 'column' and 'columnspan' are integers.
Other values are strings.

teek.Widget.grid_slaves()¶: Similar to pack_slaves(). Use row_or_column.get_slaves() if you need the -row and -column options of grid slaves in grid(3tk).

teek.Widget.grid_rows¶
teek.Widget.grid_columns¶: Lists of row objects or column objects.

Grid Row and Column Objects¶

Tk has some options and other things that can be done to rows or columns of a grid. These are represented with row objects and column objects in teek.

>>> window = teek.Window()
>>> window.grid_rows
[]
>>> teek.Label(window, "label text").grid()    # goes to row 0, column 0
>>> window.grid_rows
[<grid row 0: has a config attribute and a get_slaves() method>]
>>> window.grid_columns
[<grid column 0: has a config attribute and a get_slaves() method>]
>>> window.grid_columns[0].config['weight']
0.0
>>> window.grid_columns[0].get_slaves()
[<teek.Label widget: text='label text'>]

Here is the reference:

row_or_column.config¶

An object that represents row or column options. Similar to Widget.config.

See grid columnconfigure and grid rowconfigure in grid(3tk) for the available options. 'weight' is a float, 'minsize' and 'pad' are ScreenDistance objects and 'uniform' is a string.

row_or_column.get_slaves()¶

Returns a list of widgets in the row or column.

This calls grid slaves documented in grid(3tk) with a -row or -column option.

Place¶

This geometry manager is useful for placing things relatively. For example, this puts a button right in the middle of its parent widget:

button.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor='center')

Here relx and rely mean “relative x” and “relative y”; that is, values between 0 and 1. The anchor='center' says that the center of the button goes to the position given with relx and rely.

Place can be also used with absolute positions given in pixels:

# 100 pixels down and 200 right from top left corner of the parent widget
button.place(x=100, y=200)

Usually that’s a bad idea. 100 pixels on your screen might look different than 100 pixels on someone else’s screen if that other system happens to use bigger fonts or something else like that. However, placing with pixels can be useful when working with other things that use pixels. For example, if you bind some mouse stuff and the user clicks something, you get the mouse x and y coordinates in pixels.

teek.Widget.place(**kwargs)¶: See place configure in place(3tk) for details. This is similar to pack().

teek.Widget.place_forget()¶: See place forget in place(3tk).

teek.Widget.place_info()¶

Very similar to pack_info() and grid_info(). The types of values are as follows:

The value of 'in' is a teek widget.
The values of 'width', 'height', 'x' and 'y' are ScreenDistance objects.
The values of 'relwidth', 'relheight', 'relx' and 'rely' are floats.
Other values are strings.