Standard options supported by widgets.
DESCRIPTION
This manual entry describes the common configuration options supported by widgets in the Tk toolkit. Every widget does not necessarily support every option (see the manual entries for individual widgets for a list of the standard options supported by that widget), but if a widget does support an option with one of the names listed below, then the option has exactly the effect described below.
For the specific syntax when using options in a function call, see the Options Syntax man page.
Rexx/Tk supports a number of options not available in native Tk. See Extra Rexx/Tk Options man page.
NOTE: Option names may be abbreviated, as long as the abbreviation is unambiguous.
activebackground - Specifies background color to use when drawing active elements. An element (a widget or portion of a widget) is active if the mouse cursor is positioned over the element and pressing a mouse button will cause some action to occur. For some elements on Windows and Macintosh systems, the active color will only be used while mouse button 1 is pressed over the element.
activeborderwidth - Specifies a non-negative value indicating the width of the 3-D border drawn around active elements. See above for definition of active elements. The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetPixels (Tcl/Tk documentation). This option is typically only available in widgets displaying more than one element at a time (e.g. menus but not buttons).
activeforeground - Specifies foreground color to use when drawing active elements. See above for definition of active elements.
anchor - Specifies how the information in a widget (e.g. text or a bitmap) is to be displayed in the widget. Must be one of the values n, ne, e, se, s, sw, w, nw, or center. For example, nw means display the information such that its top-left corner is at the top-left corner of the widget.
background or bg - Specifies the normal background color to use when displaying the widget.
bitmap - Specifies a bitmap to display in the widget, in any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetBitmap (Tcl/Tk documentation). The exact way in which the bitmap is displayed may be affected by other options such as anchor or justify. Typically, if this option is specified then it overrides other options that specify a textual value to display in the widget; the bitmap option may be reset to an empty string to re-enable a text display. In widgets that support both bitmap and image options, image will usually override bitmap.
borderwidth or bd - Specifies a non-negative value indicating the width of the 3-D border to draw around the outside of the widget (if such a border is being drawn; the relief option typically determines this). The value may also be used when drawing 3-D effects in the interior of the widget. The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetPixels (Tcl/Tk documentation).
cursor - Specifies the mouse cursor to be used for the widget. The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetCursor (Tcl/Tk documentation).
disabledforeground - Specifies foreground color to use when drawing a disabled element. If the option is specified as an empty string (which is typically the case on monochrome displays), disabled elements are drawn with the normal foreground color but they are dimmed by drawing them with a stippled fill pattern.
exportselection - (UNIX only) Specifies whether or not a selection in the widget should also be the X selection. The value may have any of the forms accepted by Tcl_GetBoolean, such as true, false, 0, 1, yes, or no. If the selection is exported, then selecting in the widget deselects the current X selection, selecting outside the widget deselects any widget selection, and the widget will respond to selection retrieval requests when it has a selection. The default is usually for widgets to export selections.
font - Specifies the font to use when drawing text inside the widget.
foreground or fg - Specifies the normal foreground color to use when displaying the widget.
highlightbackground - Specifies the color to display in the traversal highlight region when the widget does not have the input focus.
highlightcolor - Specifies the color to use for the traversal highlight rectangle that is drawn around the widget when it has the input focus.
highlightthickness - Specifies a non-negative value indicating the width of the highlight rectangle to draw around the outside of the widget when it has the input focus. The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetPixels (Tcl/Tk documentation). If the value is zero, no focus highlight is drawn around the widget.
image - Specifies an image to display in the widget, which must have been created with the TkImage() function. Typically, if the image option is specified then it overrides other options that specify a bitmap or textual value to display in the widget; the image option may be reset to an empty string to re-enable a bitmap or text display.
insertbackground - Specifies the color to use as background in the area covered by the insertion cursor. This color will normally override either the normal background for the widget (or the selection background if the insertion cursor happens to fall in the selection).
insertborderwidth - Specifies a non-negative value indicating the width of the 3-D border to draw around the insertion cursor. The value may have any of the forms accept- able to Tk_GetPixels (Tcl/Tk documentation).
insertofftime - Specifies a non-negative integer value indicating the number of milliseconds the insertion cursor should remain "off" in each blink cycle. If this option is zero then the cursor doesn't blink: it is on all the time.
insertontime - Specifies a non-negative integer value indicating the number of milliseconds the insertion cursor should remain "on" in each blink cycle.
insertwidth - Specifies a value indicating the total width of the insertion cursor. The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetPixels (Tcl/Tk documentation). If a border has been specified for the insertion cursor (using the insertBorderWidth option), the border will be drawn inside the width specified by the insertwidth option.
jump - For widgets with a slider that can be dragged to adjust a value, such as scrollbars, this option determines when notifications are made about changes in the value. The option's value must be a boolean of the form accepted by Tcl_GetBoolean (Tcl/Tk documentation). If the value is false, updates are made continuously as the slider is dragged. If the value is true, updates are delayed until the mouse button is released to end the drag; at that point a single notification is made (the value "jumps" rather than changing smoothly).
justify - When there are multiple lines of text displayed in a widget, this option determines how the lines line up with each other. Must be one of left, center, or right. Left means that the lines' left edges all line up, center means that the lines' centers are aligned, and right means that the lines' right edges line up.
orient - For widgets that can lay themselves out with either a horizontal or vertical orientation, such as scrollbars, this option specifies which orientation should be used. Must be either horizontal or vertical or an abbreviation of one of these.
padx - Specifies a non-negative value indicating how much extra space to request for the widget in the X direction. The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetPixels (Tcl/Tk documentation). When computing how large a window it needs, the widget will add this amount to the width it would normally need (as determined by the width of the things displayed in the widget); if the geometry manager can satisfy this request, the widget will end up with extra internal space to the left and/or right of what it displays inside. Most widgets only use this option for padding text: if they are displaying a bitmap or image, then they usually ignore padding options.
pady - Specifies a non-negative value indicating how much extra space to request for the widget in the Y direction. The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetPixels (Tcl/Tk documentation). When computing how large a window it needs, the widget will add this amount to the height it would normally need (as determined by the height of the things displayed in the widget); if the geometry manager can satisfy this request, the widget will end up with extra internal space above and/or below what it displays inside. Most widgets only use this option for padding text: if they are displaying a bitmap or image, then they usually ignore padding options.
relief - Specifies the 3-D effect desired for the widget. Acceptable values are raised, sunken, flat, ridge, solid, and groove. The value indicates how the interior of the widget should appear relative to its exterior; for example, raised means the interior of the widget should appear to protrude from the screen, relative to the exterior of the widget.
repeatdelay - Specifies the number of milliseconds a button or key must be held down before it begins to autorepeat. Used, for example, on the up and down arrows in scrollbars.
repeatinterval - Used in conjunction with repeatDelay: once auto- repeat begins, this option determines the number of milliseconds between auto-repeats.
selectbackground - Specifies the background color to use when displaying selected items.
selectborderwidth - Specifies a non-negative value indicating the width of the 3-D border to draw around selected items. The value may have any of the forms acceptable to Tk_GetPixels (Tcl/Tk documentation).
selectforeground - Specifies the foreground color to use when displaying selected items.
setgrid - Specifies a boolean value that determines whether this widget controls the resizing grid for its toplevel window. This option is typically used in text widgets, where the information in the widget has a natural size (the size of a character) and it makes sense for the window's dimensions to be integral numbers of these units. These natural window sizes form a grid. If the setgrid option is set to true then the widget will communicate with the window manager so that when the user interactively resizes the toplevel window that contains the widget, the dimensions of the window will be displayed to the user in grid units and the window size will be constrained to integral numbers of grid units. See the section GRIDDED GEOMETRY MANAGEMENT in the TkWm() manual entry for more details.
takefocus - Determines whether the window accepts the focus during keyboard traversal (e.g., Tab and Shift- Tab). Before setting the focus to a window, the traversal scripts consult the value of the takefocus option. A value of 0 means that the widget should be skipped entirely during keyboard traversal. 1 means that the widget should receive the input focus as long as it is viewable (it and all of its ancestors are mapped). An empty value for the option means that the traversal scripts make the decision about whether or not to focus on the widget: the current algorithm is to skip the widget if it is disabled, if it has no key bindings, or if it is not viewable.
text - Specifies a string to be displayed inside the widget. The way in which the string is displayed depends on the particular widget and may be determined by other options, such as anchor or justify.
textvariable - Specifies the name of a variable. The value of the variable is a text string to be displayed inside the widget; if the variable value changes then the widget will automatically update itself to reflect the new value. The way in which the string is displayed in the widget depends on the particular widget and may be determined by other options, such as anchor or justify.
troughcolor - Specifies the color to use for the rectangular trough areas in widgets such as scrollbars and scales.
underline - Specifies the integer index of a character to underline in the widget. This option is used by the default bindings to implement keyboard traversal for menu buttons and menu entries. 0 corre- sponds to the first character of the text displayed in the widget, 1 to the next character, and so on.
wraplength - For widgets that can perform word-wrapping, this option specifies the maximum line length. Lines that would exceed this length are wrapped onto the next line, so that no line is longer than the specified length. The value may be specified in any of the standard forms for screen distances. If this value is less than or equal to 0 then no wrapping is done: lines will break only at newline characters in the text.