tktable-tile-dev

[Tile-dev] Nooby support here?

[Ken T. <ken...@gm...>]

Sorry if this is the wrong place, and feel free to redirect...

This is Tcl85 on win32. I am trying the quick-dirty way to switch to 
Tile: Just Load It.

What I did was place Tile078 in my Tcl tree like this:

\Tcl\lib\Tile....

when I do the wish thing, all goes well, the stuff I build interactively 
comes up with widgets that match the widgets in the Display control 
panel as I switch XP themes.

But I am driving Tcl/Tk from Lisp (via the C API).

the window matches the current XP theme, but not the widgets. The 
scrollbars are the real giveaway.

wish seemed to get into Tile without any help, but I guess I have to 
give Tk a nudge. Reasonable enough. But what is the nudge? the doc says:

"If you're feeling adventurous, you can try:

    namespace import ttk::*"

That does not work, and neither does the alternative, specifying 
"ttk::button", eg. The error is something like "no such namespace"

Damn, I am exhausted, it just occurred to me to search the archives here 
and use Google. :( Will commence that now, but any help on getting Tile 
into play using just the C API (and not talking to a wish process via a 
pipe) would be appreciated.

ken

Re: [Tile-dev] Nooby support here?

[Ken T. <ken...@gm...>]

Ken Tilton wrote:

> Ken Tilton wrote:
>
>> Sorry if this is the wrong place, and feel free to redirect...
>>
>> This is Tcl85 on win32. I am trying the quick-dirty way to switch to 
>> Tile: Just Load It.
>>
>> What I did was place Tile078 in my Tcl tree like this:
>>
>> \Tcl\lib\Tile....
>>
>> when I do the wish thing, all goes well, the stuff I build 
>> interactively comes up with widgets that match the widgets in the 
>> Display control panel as I switch XP themes.
>>
>> But I am driving Tcl/Tk from Lisp (via the C API).
>>
>> the window matches the current XP theme, but not the widgets. The 
>> scrollbars are the real giveaway.
>>
>> wish seemed to get into Tile without any help, but I guess I have to 
>> give Tk a nudge. Reasonable enough. But what is the nudge? the doc says:
>>
>> "If you're feeling adventurous, you can try:
>>
>>    namespace import ttk::*"
>>
>> That does not work, and neither does the alternative, specifying 
>> "ttk::button", eg. The error is something like "no such namespace"
>>
>> Damn, I am exhausted, it just occurred to me to search the archives 
>> here and use Google. :( Will commence that now, but any help on 
>> getting Tile into play using just the C API (and not talking to a 
>> wish process via a pipe) would be appreciated.
>
>
> OK, got this much:
>
>  (tk-format-now "package require tile") ;; <-- oops, needed this
>  (tk-format-now "namespace import -force ttk::*")
>
> I have the -force (which I saw described as a bad idea) because 
> without it I got "label already exists" or something to that effect.
>
> Now I get -pady is an invalid option. Understood, but some doc I saw 
> said all options were supported for setting and querying though 
> otherwise inoperative just to make exercises such as mine (switching 
> to Tile in two minutes) feasible. Not so?
>
> Still googling....

OK, I broke down and defeated all the inappropriate options, did a 
setTheme to xpnative, and voila, it all works. Way cool. But... was 
there an easier way?

Two other questions:

  1. should I worry about that -force option?
  2. Looking at the themes listed here 
http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/index.html i do not see anything 
that cries out "OS X native aqua"

I'll continue googling for #2

ken

Re: [Tile-dev] Nooby support here?

[Jeff H. <je...@ac...>]

Ken Tilton wrote:
>  1. should I worry about that -force option?

It is better to consider the ttk::label and ::label commands separately 
and not simply overwrite the classic Tk commands.  You may well find 
that more advanced applications have use for both.

>  2. Looking at the themes listed here 
> http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/index.html i do not see anything 
> that cries out "OS X native aqua"

Don't bother with setTheme - the default theme on OS X is the native 
one.  Check out the screenshots at the link above to see it.

Jeff

Re: [Tile-dev] Nooby support here?

[Joe E. <jen...@fl...>]

Ken Tilton wrote:
>  [...]
> >> wish seemed to get into Tile without any help, but I guess I have to
> >> give Tk a nudge. Reasonable enough. But what is the nudge? the doc says:
> >>
> >> "If you're feeling adventurous, you can try:
> >>
> >>    namespace import ttk::*"

You omitted the next sentence, which is very important: *in your
application's namespace(s)* [...]".  Don't say [namespace import ttk::*]
at global scope, this Does Not Work and Will Break Stuff.

> > OK, got this much:
> >
> >  (tk-format-now "package require tile") ;; <-- oops, needed this

That was my first guess as to what was missing...

> >  (tk-format-now "namespace import -force ttk::*")

Don't do that, see above.

> > Now I get -pady is an invalid option. Understood, but some doc I saw
> > said all options were supported for setting and querying though
> > otherwise inoperative just to make exercises such as mine (switching
> > to Tile in two minutes) feasible. Not so?

Not anymore, sorry.  Earlier Tile releases used to include
compatibility options as an experiment to see how feasible
it would be to maintain complete- or near-complete API
compatibility with Tk 8.4.  The results of the experiment
were: not very feasible.  The compatibility options caused
more problems than they solved, so were removed in the 0.7
release.

> OK, I broke down and defeated all the inappropriate options, did a
> setTheme to xpnative, and voila, it all works. Way cool. But... was
> there an easier way?

You don't need to call "setTheme"; the library startup script
automatically chooses an appropriate theme for you.

> Two other questions:
>
>   1. should I worry about that -force option?
>   2. Looking at the themes listed here
> http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/index.html i do not see anything
> that cries out "OS X native aqua"

That's just because Pat (who maintains the website) doesn't
have a Mac to take screenshots on :-)  The "aqua" theme --
which will be selected by default on OSX -- has a reasonably
good native look and feel.


--Joe English