THE BIG SELECTOR BOX

A Tkinter text widget based option selector

Copyright (c) 2020, Antal Koós
License: MIT

Use

mouse buttons on item:

• left: selects/unselects the item

mouse buttons on group separator:

• left: selects all items in the group
• right: unselects all items in the group

Selecting with dragging the mouse and clicking on “Select/Unselect all” acts only on the selected items.

import tkinter as tk
import thebigselector as tbs
    ...
bsb= tbs.BigSelBox(win, items= items, callback= cb, intro= intro, see="items_start")
    ...

See the demos for the details!

BigSelBox

BigSelBox is an option selector, derived from ttk.Frame and contains a tk.Text widget associated with a vertical ttk.Scrollbar.

BigSelBox(  master, items=[], selections=[], callback=None,
            separators={}, sepprops={}, textprops={},
            frameprops={}, itemprops={},
            pickedprops={}, intro=" ", introprops={},
            compl=" ", complprops={}, see=None)

Args:

• master: the master widget
• items: sequence of strings; whitespaces will be replaced with ’_’
• selections: indexes of initially selected items
• textprops: dict, text widget properties
• frameprops: dict, main frame (ttk.Frame) properties
• itemprops: dict, item text (tag) properties
• pickedprops: dict, text (tag) properties of selected items

• callback: called by clicking on an item or group separator or button with these arguments:

  • the BigSelBox instance

  • the trigger action that can be:

    • actnOk, actnCancel,
    • actnSelect, actnUnselect,
    • actnSelectAll, actnUnselectAll,
    • actnSelectSeparator, actnUnselectSeparator

  • the index of the selected/unselected item/group separator, or None in case of pressing “Ok”, “Select”, “Unselect all”, “Cancel”

• separators: dict with index:separator_string pairs, where index is the index of the item before the string must be inserted.
• sepprops: dict, separator (tag) properties
• intro: introductory text string
• introprops: dict, introductory text (tag) properties
• compl: completion text after the item section
• complprops: dict, completion text (tag) properties

• see: a text widget index for scroll the text until the part on that position is visible.
  Special indexes:

  • Marks: “intro_start”, “intro_end”, “items_start”, “items_end”, “compl_start”, “compl_end”
  • Tags: “#5.first”: the 6th item, “$5.first”: the 6th group separator

• pickedcolors: (foreground, background) colors of the selected items

Attributes:

• items (ro): tuple of strings; whitespaces will be replaced with ’_’
• selected (ro): index of selected items
• intro (ro): introductory text
• compl (ro): completion text

The callback can be set two ways, e.g.: sb.callback=cb or sb["callback"]=cb

Methods:

set_items(items,selections=[], see=None): sets the items.

• items: sequence of strings; whitespaces will be replaced with ’_’
• selections: indexes of initially selected items
• see: a text widget index

set_selections(selections, see=None): sets the selections.

• selections: indexes of initially selected item
• see: a text widget index

set_intro(txt, see=None): sets the introductory text.

• txt: the text
• see: a text widget index

set_compl(txt, see=None): sets the completion text.

• txt: the text
• see: a text widget index

see(self,index): scrolls the text until the part on that position is visible.

disable_button(btnstr): disables/enables a button.
enable_button(btnstr): disables/enables a button.

• btnstr can be “ok”, “cancel”, “select all”, “unselect all”

TopBSB

A Tkinter top level window class with a ‘BigSelBox’ inside.

TopBSB(parent, items=[], selections=[], callback=None,
    separators={}, sepprops={}, textprops={},
    frameprops={}, itemprops={},
    pickedprops={}, intro="", introprops={},
    compl="", complprops={},
    **toplevel_kwargs)

Args:

• parent: the parent window
• toplevel_kwargs: tk.Toplevel window attributes

The other args will be passed to the inner BigSelBox instance.
When the window is destroyed, the callback also will be called with (box, actnCancel, None).

Module utilities

geom(wdg): returns the widget’s geometry values as ints: (width, height, x, y).

fix_minsize(wdg): freezes the widget size to the recommended minimal size.